


Nephilium

by Mikaiyawa



Category: Black Veil Brides, Cinema Bizarre, H.I.M., Lovex, Panik, Private Line
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Nephilium
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-04-06
Updated: 2012-04-27
Packaged: 2017-10-27 17:01:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 24
Words: 153,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/298052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikaiyawa/pseuds/Mikaiyawa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>fics for characters in my Nephilium universe. ratings and pairings will vary widely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Meeting the Vampire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the beginning of things there was a vampire with a sleepwalking problem...

Mikko felt his wards shift, but he’d been feeling them fluctuating all evening thanks to the witch moving in upstairs.

The he felt a power spike and warily checked to be sure he had a weapon handy before going back to the paperwork that had kept him here late in the first place.

He had two, the blessed silver letter opener and the Sig Saur in his desk drawer.

The wards flickered again and this time he heard the little bell over his door tinkling merrily.

A door he’d locked a good four hours ago after his last customer had left.

Mikko rose and headed for the front showroom.  That door wouldn’t open unless something very desperately needed Sanctuary.

He should know, he’d set the damn things that way when he’d bought the building fifty years ago.

~0~

Vivian woke with a start and panted in terrified reaction.

He didn’t remember walking in here, but a bell had woken him from his nightmare, Vivian craned his head up to look at the still moving bit of silver.

How had he gotten here?

He couldn’t remember.

Where was here?

Looking around he saw racks of simple looking robes, the sort of thing that made him think of some of the things extra’s wore in vampire and demon movies, but in all colors not just the stereotypical black.  There were shelves upon shelves of books, a series of glassed in counters with all sorts of other things inside from crystals to twisted bits of wood and bits of jewelry.  Behind the counter were more shelves laden down with heavy looking pottery jars.

He sniffed; the air held the echoes of sandalwood perfume and… baked apples?

What kind of esoterica shop smelled liked baked apples?

“The kind that has an eccentric owner with a reputation for knowing his shit."

Vivian felt like he jumped out of his skin as he spun to his left and toward the voice.

The voice belonged to shortish blond man who was slender enough and pretty enough to be a girl.  One who had just tossed a long plait of golden hair back over his shoulder and moved closer with no apparent regard for the fact that Vivian knew his eyes were glowing the red gold of a freaked out vampire.

“And you look like you need a mug of tea,” strong hands caught his arm and firmly guided him away from the door and its tinkling silver bell.

Not the reaction Vivian had come to expect from strangers finding a vampire on their doorstep.

~0~

A mug of tea proved to be very settling, as did an unbiased ear.  Vivian found himself pouring out all his troubles, from his kidnapping to his forced conversion to his accidental bonding to one of his oldest and best friends in the whole world.

His bonding to a man who happened to be the singer for his band.

That alone was an open invitation to all kinds of problems.

What would the fans think?

What would happen if they broke up?

His benefactor, who had introduced himself as Mikko, had snorted at some of his fears and calmly explained the mechanics of bonding as it pertained to vampires.

He managed to make Vivian feel silly without making him feel terribly stupid.

Theon was his mate not just because Vivian loved him, though apparently that helped a great deal.  He was compatible with regards to personality, which he knew or they’d never have been good friends all these years in a to small RV touring all over the world, and in terms of magic.

Vivian hadn’t thought about that.

Then Mikko had cocked his head oddly and stared at the face of what had to be a very old grandfather clock and reached out to pick up a wireless phone.

And told him to call home.

Not at all the reaction he’d have expected to finding a vampire on the doorstep.

He called home.

~0~

Theon panted in relief as he trotted down the street in the wake of Christian and Jason’s lupine forms.  Sammy as usual was right behind them and that left he and Julian trailing along behind.

He was getting to old for this shit.

He’d lost count of the number of times he’d woken up and found Vivian had sleepwalked off god alone knew where in the night.

Four months.

He’d been sleepwalking for four months, having nightmares for almost five and hadn’t been safely back home for much longer.

Not that Theon was doing much better really, he’d spent seven days chained to a post waiting for Vivian to wake back up from whatever ritual that lot of lunatics had inflicted on him.

Seven days waiting to learn if he’d be found in time or die waiting.

If that lot had had their way he’d have died either under a sacrificial knife or at the fangs of his friend.

He _had_ become intimately familiar with those fangs.

But Vivian had ripped the little coven of idiots to pieces before he’d dragged his bloodied, muddied and emaciated frame over to literally rip the chains holding Theon to that post into component links.

Then he’d ripped Theon’s clothes off and fucked him into one of the best orgasms of his life.

Things went kind of fuzzy after that.

Sammy had tried to explain things, but he wasn’t a vampire so his explanations were a bit vague.

Jason had tried, but his was colored by that fact he was one third of a lycan triad bond with Christian and Julian hold up the other two ends.

Theon had obsessed for a while over Julian being the only human in the set, at least until he’d gotten on the subject of sex and had Julian grin at him.

Christian had offered to demonstrate and gotten smacked for it.

He huffed as he caught up to the others.

The sex had been great, but Vivian kept freaking out the morning after, well afternoon after, he didn’t do daylight so well now.  Jason was working on a solution but the fine tuning was taking a while.

And all the while it was one more worry of what would happen if Vivian sleep walked out into full sunlight.

“You don’t have to lurk outside the door.”

Theon jumped and shared rueful smiles with Sammy and Julian.  But they all filed inside as Christian shook his head over some of the robes in the display window.

“The ones up front are mostly for tourists or people looking for mummers costumes, we make up real ones in the back.  Vivian is back this way.”

Sammy shrugged at them and followed the owner of that long golden braid, Theon swallowed hard and followed, but he ran the last few steps when he saw Vivian laid out on a couch.

Vivian was mostly on his side and had one hand curled under his cheek, he looked to be as peacefully asleep as he ever did these days.

“Wherever he was made, you need to go back.”

Christian let out a chuff in shock.

“We can’t,” blurted Theon, he couldn’t make Vivi go back there, he had horrible nightmares now, how much worse would it be seeing the place again?

“Cant?” asked that calm voice softly as impossibly blue eyes bored into his own.  “Or won’t?  You can’t let fear destroy you.”

“How do you know anything about it?”  Theon was starting to feel defensive.

Those blue eyes shifted as their owner moved to pull down mugs for tea.

“He told me.”

“Why would he tell you,” demanded Theon.  “You don’t know him from Adam.”

The man turned back around and set a mismatched collection of mugs on the table.

“Exactly.  I’m a stranger, not the man he loves more than life and is terrified will leave him.”

Theon froze for a split second as those words percolated through his frustration, and then he exploded to his feet in anger.

“I would _never_ leave him.”

The smile he got left him feeling off balance.

“Exactly.  You are his _mate_.  He hasn’t quite gotten that bit yet.  It takes getting used to, even when you’re raised to the idea.”  Slim hands deftly poured tea from a large pot in the center of the table and turned to hand cups around.  A rather ironic smile was shared with Christian and Jason.

Jason shook his head and took a sniff of the tea then gave their host a startled look.

“You know lycan?”

The smile was faint, but amused.

“I’ve run with a few packs, hunted with one for a while.  And I know a healer by his marks when he walks in my door.  Like I know Hunters.” A shrug and he was turning back to the table to fill another mug for Jason as he’d passed the first one to Julian.

“Interesting place then,” observed Christian as he eyed some of the weaponry decorating the walls.

“The family has been in the business for a while.”

Theon felt like there was a whole level of conversation he was missing.

“Still hunting?” asked Christian with a casualness that screamed at Theon.

“Not actively.” was the answer as the man refilled his own mug from the same pot he’d used to fill their mugs.  “Lone Hunters tend to end up very dead.  I’m partial to breathing.”

Theon abruptly sat down on the rug beside a sleeping Vivian with a thump.

The wards Julian said he’d felt on the street, the power smell Jason had been tracking, the weapons on the walls, the _books_.  Hell, the pragmatic advice, he was looking at a man who had been part of a Hunter team like theirs.

“And I still say he needs to go back to where he was made, you all do.  To lay those demons to rest.”

“What happened to your team?”

Julian’s question was soft, but Theon suddenly had the feeling that the man he was looking at wasn’t a loner by choice.

“Dead.  I was the last one standing after a nasty fight.”  Blue eyes went distant and one hand reached up to stroke over a lump of twisted metal on a shelf.

A bit of twisted metal that Theon realized with a start was the half blasted, half melted remains of a mace head.

“You need to go back.  I did.  It helped.”

“We still have a daylight issue…” muttered Sammy.

He got a snort and the small man was moving again, pulling down jars.

“Sunlight can be gotten around.”

~0~

Christian sighed.

He really hated mysteries he couldn’t solve.

Michael ‘Mikko’ Red Elk was turning into one of those mysteries.

His advice had worked to help get Vivian to where he wasn’t sleepwalking all the damn time, and the nightmares were tapering off at a rate that felt more normal.

Jason had been impressed with the herbal things he’d had handy, and his potion making skills.

Vivian had been hesitant, and Theon had been a world class worry wart, but with the addition of two commonplace herbs Jason’s initial potion for internal vampire sunscreen was working.  They’d had one incident where it had worn off and Vivi had ended up a bit red, but now that they knew how fast he burned through it they could compensate.

It helped that the potion was safe for humans to consume.

Though Julian had blushed an adorable beet red at the suggestion that Theon should take the potion and let Vivian get a double dose by feeding.

Of course the ‘feeding’ he’d walked in on was the sort where a guy was collecting a bit of extra protein via another guy’s dick.

Theon at least had been enjoying the hell out of it, and had screamed his damn head off when Vivian went from sucking to fucking and from fucking to biting.

Jason had closed the door again and shrugged making a wry comment about the hazards of feeding vampires.

Christian wouldn’t know, he wasn’t that flavor of lycan, quite literally.

But that didn’t solve the nagging issue about Mikko.

There was just something about the guy.

He had a killer weapon collection, a library that once Theon had gotten over his snit had the singer over doing research _at least_ twice a month.  He had access to all sorts of supplies, from the herbs for Vivian’s sunscreen potion, to the raw stone for Julian’s runes, to a pair of silver rings that once coated properly were immensely useful to Jason.

He knew things.

He knew more close combat weapon styles than most Slayers Christian knew for one.

It drove Christian _nuts_.

And Sammy was finding excuses to hang out over at the shop more often.

Christian sighed and shut down his laptop.

He had two mates to cuddle; he wasn’t going to find out anything new in the databases tonight.

He’d just keep an eye on things.


	2. Origins : Mikko

Mikko sighed and looked up at the stars.

There were days he hated being all but immortal.

Today was turning into one of them.

Vivian was half hysterical, Theon only just able to keep his bonded mate calm.  Jason was missing, Sammy was missing and a museum curator was very messily dead.

Part of her collection was also gone.

Mikko was fully behind Vivian in thinking it wasn't a coincidence.

They'd been searching for places that had been used in the past for the Brugerian rites and as they found them checking them over.  Christian was stressed out, but his nose had never been quite as good as Jason's.  Julian kept petting him and whispering encouragement even as the places they checked came back one by one without a positive resolution.

Mikko closed his eyes and reached out to the power under the earth and felt for the disruption that Brugerian rites always left.  Off in the distance, somewhere to the north and little to the east he could feel ripples in the power flows.

Something hadn't gone to plan; the power flows were sharp, clean and faintly flavored with a fierce protectiveness.  He'd expected the taint of bloody barbarity that normally went with the Rites, not this.

Mikko opened his eyes and yelped, lurching backwards when he found Theon's blue green eyes all but nose to nose with his own.

“Anything?”

Mikko had a hand over his heart and tried to force its hurried beat calm by will alone.

Thank all the gods his wings hadn't come out, keeping his secret hidden would have been impossible then.

And he _liked_ these Hunters, he didn't want to have to injure or kill one of them trying to escape.  Yet again he wished Nephilium weren't categorized as high level demons kin.  The only things with a higher kill on sight rating were Destroyers, and Mikko sometimes felt the order should be reversed.  But that was his own bias speaking, and his knowledge of how nastily destructive his own species could be, how destructive his own sister had been.

He shoved the thought aside.

“North and a little east is all I get.  Nothing concrete at all.”

“Would a mirror help,” asked Julian his face tight with worry.  He had one mate stressed out and the other missing, so Mikko was impressed with how the young Wardsmith was coping.

“It can't hurt.”  Mikko offered, but he knew more than likely anything they got would be vague.

“I'll get it.” Vivian swept off in a burst of vampire speed, his nerves amplifying his powers just that much more.

This had to be hell for him, he'd been _made_ using the Brugerians, and Theon had been the intended sacrifice to bind him.  The cult bringing him over hadn't counted on Theon being Vivian's mate and had found themselves being torn apart by the Childe they intended to bind to them.

It had been messy.  Very messy. 

When the dust settled and the High lines came in to survey the damage they'd been surprised to find in the wreckage one human man and one love bound High line vampire.  It had taken one of the few Royals handy to divine the truth from Vivian and Theon's muddled memories.

She had huffed in amusement and stood witness to their bond and things had been swept, perhaps not neatly, but completely under the rug.

Mikko had met the group when Vivian's nightmares and sleepwalking had carried him literally into the shop he used as cover.

A bit of tea and the advice to face the place that his nightmares centered on in daylight had helped.

They'd needed his help a few months later for a nest of feral half-blood Jouton and after that fight had more or less accepted him as a Hunt ally.

Christian still had bearded him after and demanded he fill in some details on his past, things he couldn't find in his searches.

Mikko had told him as much of the truth as he could.

Leaving out trivial details like the fact he was almost two hundred years old.  His mother's name, his father’s tribe, and the name he answered to as contrasted by the one on his birth certificate.

A fake, but he had the family bible, and pointed to the entry that marked his _real_ entry into the world as being who he was named for.

He hated the lie.

He couldn't afford to risk them with the truth.

Vivian was back with the copper mirror in its swathing of blue silk.

~0~

Vivian settled down beside Theon and watched as Mikko carefully unwrapped the mirror and laid it flat on bare soil.  He’d asked once why Mikko didn’t use a mirror of black glass; the answer had been that this one had been in his family for years and thus a familiar tool.

Vivian knew all about how familiar tools worked better, especially for scrying.

The almost pretty face went blank in concentration and the deep blue eyes closed as slender fingers traced patterns from memory around the polished copper disk.

It took exponentially more power to cast a mirror viewing spell where others could see.

Mikko always cast that way.  He said he missed too many things that the others might see.

Christian settled beside Vivian and pulled Julian down to nestle into his side.

The mist formed then cleared over the copper disk.

“Vittu.”

None of them had expected a clear scene to form.

Jason collared in silver and buried in heavy chains in the middle of a ritual circle.

Blood everywhere.

Sammy, filthy, his hair covered in torn scarlet silk standing over the lycan he called brother with a bloodied broadsword in hand and a look they'd never seen before on his face.  Angry, protective and absolutely determined, to do _what_ they had no idea.

“Oh, shit.  Mikko is this Past, Future or Now?”

Mikko panted and traced a rune with one trembling hand.  He was dead white and probably couldn't hold this for long.  Vivian knew he hadn't slept any more the rest of them since Sammy was taken.

Blue, but only just barely.  Future.

Near future.

“Graveyard.”  Christian was scanning for background details.

“Old graveyard,” corrected Julian, his eyes scanning just as desperately for clues.

Theon swore and ran for a map just as Mikko lost his hold on the spell and the image became a fountain of white light.

Vivian wondered what variation of the spell Mikko used that the failure was so spectacular, but like always he just caught the smaller man before he passed out.  He knew better than to touch the mirror right now.  It would 'bite' him as the only hand that could wrap it up safely right now was the hand that had charged it.  He didn't mess with Julian's ward stones or Jason’s bowl and rings for the same reason.

Mikko panted and groped blindly for the silk and clumsily wrapped the mirror.

“Anything?”

“Cold, the crypts are above ground, too cold to dig most of the year.”

Mikko closed his eyes and leaned on Vivian as Theon came back with the map and a dowsing pendulum.

“Oulu.  They are in Oulu.”

He spread the map with help from many hands and focused on the pendulum again.

It circled down tight and this time settled right over Oulu.

“I'll get the van.”

~0~

Julian was surprised Mikko had insisted on coming.  After his mirror casting he'd barely been able to stand.  He knew how much power it took to cast where a group could see things, mostly because he couldn't cast where more than he, Christian and Jason could see what his mirror showed.  Julian just wondered why future scrying took it out of Mikko so badly.  He'd seen the man cast for the past and set things where all six of them could watch and held it for hours without the kind of strain a few minutes of future scrying had taken.

But that was like asking why Mikko had the power pool he did. Pointless, he'd never get an answer.  If Julian hadn't known better he would have sworn Mikko was a Guardian.  But they'd met an actual Guardian of the capitol 'G' and 'protector of innocents’ variety.

And according to her Mikko wasn't one.

Mikko had insisted though, and after he swallowed down a vial of something that glowed faintly green he packed a satchel that would have made any serious Summoner actively green with envy.

Dr. Cullen's powders didn't come cheaply, and that was with Julian knowing damn well that Sammy and Vivian both knew Dr. Cullen personally from their stints at Berlin's Institute for Magickal Learning.  It didn't help that only a very few people had been able to duplicate his work.

That implied either Mikko had deeper pockets than he'd been letting on, or that he was a far better potion maker than he'd been letting on.

Julian wasn't sure which, both were equally likely.

He leaned into Christian and watched their unlikely fifth.

They'd met him after Vivian had been turned by force.  He'd been having nightmares and bouts of sleepwalking that had the rest of the guys worried and Theon all but frantic and in the middle of one had literally walked through heavy wards and into Mikko's little shop.

Unlike most of the other hidden dealers in magical things Mikko hadn't tried to stake him, or take his head off or any other equally violent action.

He'd sat him down with a mug of hot tea and had him call home.

Given the usual reaction to a lone and unknown vampire wandering in, that had been rather shocking.

But then he'd followed it up with some rather harsh, but very sound advice.

After a trip to the place Vivian had been made the nightmares eased off and the sleepwalking stopped.

When Sammy had begun making excuses to go visit Christian began looking into the man's background.

He'd been pissed that it was so blank.  Blank histories with only very minimal information tended to be covers for all kinds of beings, many of which were really rather nasty.

Mikko had more or less cleared Christian's concerns.  A bit less than more but with the explanation that his family had been killed and some of _why_ , well Julian at least could understand not wanting renegade Hunters coming knocking because of something a relative had done.

And apparently his younger sister had been utterly nasty.  He'd seen a single photograph and been appalled.  Sofi had been the archetype for an angel; all she would have needed was fluffy white feathered wings.  She'd had golden ringlet curls, big sapphire blue eyes and had been gorgeous.

She'd also apparently had a thing for the blackest sort of magic’s and had liked stealing babies and young women for rituals that would have been right up Elizabeth Bathory's alley.

Given how pretty Mikko was, Julian was sure there would be Hunters out there who would be gunning for Mikko based on his looks and his power level, and ignore that the man was nothing like his sister.

Vivian had taken over driving so Christian could use his superior skills on the laptop to find where they were going a bit more precisely.

An old graveyard in Oulu really wasn't all that specific after all.

And given that it was getting dark they really needed to put a bit of speed on things.

Christian squeezed his fingers, and then picked up his hand to drop a small kiss to Julian's palm, a tiny gesture, but one that showed how fiercely the big lycan loved him.  A kiss to the palm had so many connotations in lycan society, almost as many as the baring of a throat.

“Got it.”

“Lemme guess, far side of town.”

“Nope, this side, turn left here.”

Theon blinked when he heard a very specific set of murmurs out of Mikko as he passed his hands over their weapons.  He could just barely see a silvery blue glimmer out of the corner of his eye settling over everything.

Specifically the bullets.

“When did you get ordained?”

“I'm not.”

Theon cast Mikko a sidelong look.

“That was a blessing.”

“Yes.  I never said it was Christian.”

Julian managed a wan smile as Theon shook himself hard.

It didn't help that he'd seen Mikko's chosen handgun for this.  A Sig Saur p220 .45 ACP.  He'd seen the rounds, a mix of silver and full jacketed lead, both of which were the nastier hollow point variety.  Both would make an almighty mess of whatever they hit.

Blessed lead he was betting now. 

Watching such a big gun being handled easily by such small hands faintly bothered him.  But he knew he couldn't cope with the recoil of such a heavy round.  His sidearm was a nine mil, just like the rest of the team.  Only Sammy carried a .45, and his was a backup in case whatever they went after wouldn’t go down with the lighter rounds they normally used.

The slide clicked home and Mikko flipped the safety on as Vivian pulled the van to a stop in front of the wrought iron gates.

He knew that look.

He'd _worn_ that look.

“Let’s go get Sammy and Jason back.”  No room for failure.  At least that ought to reassure his worry wart mate a little.

Julian gulped and shouldered his own bag and tucked his pistol in the holster under his arm and followed.

~0~

Sammy woke.

At first he thought he was safe in his bunk on the bus, but then the blood smell and the stale rot in the air woke him the rest of the way.

He tried to sit up.

The space was too small.

He took a deep breath of sour air and sniffed as his hands explored his prison.

There was a thread of something marginally cleaner, definitely fresher, so he turned his face to it.

He could smell something familiar.  A musk he knew like a familiar friend.

Then he heard it.

A thin scream of pain.

A lupine scream.

Or lycan.

Jason.

Sammy shoved at the roof of his prison, and kept shoving as it shifted by minuscule increments until he ended up with a face full of rancid smelling dirt.

He grit his teeth, tried not to breathe too much and kept shoving and digging until he came out in a room that made him swear.

What the fuck was wrong with people.  Creativity was not a god damned crime.

Miles of scarlet fabric, black and red candles on black floor candelabra and stuck into iron wall sconces.  Mismatched weapons and armor on the stone walls between swathings of more blood red fabric. He reached out and grabbed some and gave a hard yank.

A curtain tumbled down on his head.

He spat a bit and wiped his face and mouth with a corner, then ripped a section free to keep his filthy hair out of his eyes while he figured out just where in fuck he was.

He heard the canine scream again and amended that thought.

And figured out who was hurting his fur brother.

A closer look and some of the weapons were so much cheap crap, but a few bits were better.  He armed himself with the best of a bad lot of maces and a broadsword that felt like it might have seen actual use.

Then he went hunting whoever was hurting Jason.

The door to his little prison had been barred from the outside, but a couple good hard kicks took care of that problem.

Whoever had tried locking him in hadn't taken adrenaline into the equation, and he was far stronger than he looked.

He was also mad as hell.

He'd worry about what they'd tried doing to him later.

Outside it was dark as hell, and the courtyard was lit by more clichéd torches.

But he could see Jason, collared and chained down to the paving stones.  That was bad enough but they’d planted him in the center of a ritual circle, one used for binding spirits.

The girl tormenting him was using a silvered knife and clearly had no fucking clue what she was doing.  Half the time Jason's cries were faked.  The rest were more surprise than genuine pain.  Jason was bleeding, but it didn't look as bad as it could have been, his fur was a disaster but the wounds Sammy could see looked superficial.

What pissed him off the worst was they'd collared Jason in an old slave collar, illegal just about everywhere now, and with the silver on the spikes resting at Jason's throat impossible for his brother to shift out of.

Worse than that; they’d clearly had him chained here for some time if the smell off piss was anything to go by.  Jason hated being filthy, as a Healer he had a thing for cleanliness.

“Ah- _hem_.”

The girl turned, her blue eyes went huge as she looked up at him.

“Oh, **_oh_**! You're awake.  Um, it's too soon.”

Sammy blinked.

Really.

“Excuse me?”

The girl fluttered and waved the knife carelessly around.

“Yeah, you're like not supposed to wake up for another three days, the ritual says so.”

Sammy so was not liking where this was going.

“Ritual,” he repeated.

“Yeah, the Burngies.”

Sammy closed his eyes.

Well fuck.

“The Brugerians?”

Jason was clearly laughing at him in spite of being collared and squashed half flat by chains.

“Uh-huh.” The girls’ eyes went round.  “Oh yeah, I'm supposed to do something.”

She turned and mangled a bit of Latin and brought the knife up over Jason's prone form.

Sammy swore and swung on instinct.

The girls’ thin arms broke under the force of the mace. But her screams were cut short by his instinctive follow up with the broadsword to the mace breaking as well.

At least the blood fountained away from where Jason lay.

Mostly anyway.

It was going to be a while before he could watch any of Kiro’s horror collection though, he had no idea beheading someone meant the blood really would spurt that way.

He was looking over Jason's chains when some pimply faced idiot came rushing out in reaction to the girls scream babbling something hysterically.

Sammy growled and pointed the tip of the broadsword at the idiot's face.

“Look, I'm having a bad day here.  Don't make it worse.”

The kid went white, squeaked and fainted dead away.

“Christ.”  Sammy drove the sword point first between two of the paving stones and reached for Jason's collar.

A hard yank and the thing was off, which let Jason shift back to human and mostly free of the chains.

“I think we need to find the Chinese guy who cursed us.”

Jason let out a faint wheeze of laughter as Sammy helped him get completely free of the chains on and around him.  He wasn’t moving very well, he kept having to stop to breathe and catching his balance like something was seriously wrong.

“Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up fuzzball.”

“Only you Sammy.”

“Jase?  You okay?”

Jason wobbled badly and Sammy was grabbing to keep him from falling over.

“Um, I think, no.  Really dizzy.”

“Fuck.  I am _so_ not carrying your big heavy butt.”

The sharp click of a gun cocking froze both of them.

“I should think not.  The object is that _he_ should die and _you_ should serve.”

Sammy straightened and turned to scowl down at the short woman who was holding a gun on them from just out of lunging range. Normal human range anyway, Sammy had a suspicion he might not qualify anymore.

“One recommendation,”

“Oh darling, you aren't in a position to make recommendations.”

Sammy growled; she was just about in range.  If he moved fast enough she'd go down and Jason would be safe.  If what he thought might have happened she’d be well within that range.

“No.  But I am.”

The loud echo of a very large handgun had Sammy diving to take Jason out of the way just in case.

When he looked back up he saw Mikko, his hands still in the easy two handed grip of the hand cannon he called a pistol, scanning the courtyard.

“Ow.”

“Jase?”

Jason blinked up at him and Sammy realized Jason wasn't reacting correctly; normally he was the one going ow after a fight.

“My ears are ringing.”

Then Sammy felt his world spinning.

~0~

Christian bolted forward, changing at a sprint to catch Sammy before he could knock his hard head off the flagstones.

Mikko grimaced and kept scanning the area.

“We need to get out of here.”

“Okay?”

Julian bolted out and wrapped his arms around Jason.  The shaking lycan buried his face in his human mates’ hair and breathed deeply.

“I'm all for leaving.”

Christian looked up at Mikko.

“What are you feeling?  You don't normally make proclamations like that.”

“Bad, bad things. Teppu, get them out, I'll follow if I can.”

Christian stiffened, but Mikko never used his birth name without a _very_ good reason.

“You're explaining this later.”

“On my mother's grave,” Mikko promised gravely, and then he was staring with narrowed eyes down the sights of his pistol at something beyond the circle of torch light.  “I really don't recommend that.”

Christian scooped Sammy up and with help from Julian had Jason upright.  Theon came darting out to help, and brought unwelcome news.

“Vivian just took out four ghouls.”

“Fucking wonderful.”

They ran, it was more of a limping stagger than a true all out run but it was the best they could do right now.  Behind them Christian could hear the sharp crack of Mikko's handgun.

He hoped six speed loaders was going enough to get the shorter man out of the mess they'd just landed in.  He really didn’t want to try and wade back in, he would, but he wasn’t looking forward to it.

~0~

One advantage I had over these poor idiots was that I was older, and more experienced.

Well, that and I'd had groups trying to kill me for years.

They weren't very organized, and whoever had called the ghouls had done a crappy job of it.  A blanket blessing took out almost half of them in one swoop and left the humans looking at me like I'd just done something impossible.

I guess the saw about how hard it is to get good help is running true; I’m not sure if any of the humans is over twenty.

Then the Summoner came out and I had to restrain myself from rolling my eyes.

Really?

He had to go with the robes and the cloak with the stupid high collar that blocks peripheral vision?

I think Lillith's crack about Jesus cluny frog on a pogo stick would be rather apt about now.

Then the demon stepped out with a wet gurgle.

Lovely.

I hate dealing with demons of bone and rot.

Sofi liked them, they were easy for her to summon, so they have what Theon would call a negative association in my mind.

Hell with it.

Christian should have Sammy and Jason back to the van if they went straight line and ran.

And if nothing really got in their way.  At least the worst of the nasty I felt was concentrated in front of me, not behind me where they'd run.

I hear the van's horn, three short blasts, silence, two longer ones, another pause and three more short ones.

They're safe enough.  Julian put some heavy duty wards on the van.

Good.

I shake my wings out and the demon takes a step back.

Demons with wings like mine tend to be high power nasties.

I am a high power nasty; I'm just not a demon.

The Summoner screams an order at his demon, and the demon is rather reluctant to follow it, that gives me time to take out most of the ghouls with another blessing and peg a human who was getting brave.  If he gets medical help for the shoulder he might live.

Might.

The Summoner just won his battle of wills and the demon pounces.

Poor stupid thing, it isn't even as strong as the one's Sofi Called.

Two rounds of blessed lead drop it. A Word of Banishment and its gone leaving a smoking slimy spot of the flagstones.  The summoner is flailing and chanting as fast as he can.

I stop and look at the idiot as I realize when he's trying to do.

Really?

He thinks he can do a free form binding and have it stick?

Fine then, I'm tired of this bullshit.

I kick off the ground and start dropping them from above.

Not sporting, or fair, but they were the ones who started it, and thirty odd on one isn’t sporting or fair either.

The cleanup crew can make of that whatever the fuck they like.

~0~

Sammy is a worry wart.

All of us have dealt with Momma Sammy in a ft before.  We’ve even dealt with him in a fit when he’s concussed and not very coherent.

None of us have dealt with him in a Momma Sammy fit when he's got vampire strength to back it up.

And right now Momma Sammy is fretting about Mikko not being with us.

Christian never would have left him behind if he didn't think he could handle things.  Mikko’s walked out of things before that were flattening the rest of the team.

Okay, maybe limped out, but he’d pulled rear guard and had proved to be very, **_very_** nasty when he was defending people he cared about.

And we think he loves Sammy.  He’s sure made a paste of things that have hurt Sammy before.

Don’t get me wrong he defends all of us pretty fiercely, but things that fuck with Sammy get terminated with _extreme_ prejudice.

Proof that little does **not** mean helpless.  That and Mikko has a .50 in his personal arsenal, that thing throwing blessed silver and lead hollow points downrange is rather like the wrathful hand of god.

And Mikko is a damn good shot.  We've speculated before that his dad might have been a sniper he's so good.

A hard thump to the side of the van gets my attention back away from where Jason is telling me how to deal with his wounds and get me looking up toward the passenger seat.

Mikko looks like hell.

“Go, **now**!”

Vivian scrambles for the driver’s seat and sends dirt flying as he whips us around and floors it.

Christian is giving Mikko a long hard look, one that has always meant trouble before.  But whatever he sees in Mikko's bloody and battered form he seems to find satisfactory.

“Later?”

Mikko doesn't even open his eyes, just nods.

“Later.”

I so want to know what's going on in my mate's head. But my other mate is still bleeding, so I have other things to worry about.

~0~

Christian grimaced when Sammy settled down by reaching up and fastening a hand around Mikko's left wrist.

That really wasn't what he was needing to see.

And that didn't bode well for the faint hope of Sammy coming out of this unconverted.

At least Mikko wasn't trying to shake Sammy off; he was stroking the mess of Sammy’s hair with one equally filthy hand.

“Where to?”

Mikko opened his eyes and quietly began giving directions.

Christian didn't like the quiet sigh of defeat he'd heard right before Mikko began telling Vivian where to turn.

“Where are we going,” not a question, but Mikko turned to look back at him with his eerily bright blue eyes.

“Safe house.  One we used when we put my sister down when she ran here.”

That gave Christian even more prickles on the back of his neck.

He hadn't known Mikko had actively helped stop his sister, as in front line fighting type helped.

“Turn here Viv, and just follow the main track.  Sammy, Sammy,” he coaxed.  “I need both hands to get us all past the wards.”

That had Julian perking up and paying attention.

Sammy reluctantly let go of Mikko's wrist, and shifted up to awkwardly rest his head on Mikko's thigh and wind an arm around his waist.

Christian felt the wards long before they got to them, and that really set the hairs on the nape of his neck to tingling.  He’d known Mikko had connections, but these felt like the Master Work of a Wardmaster backed up by years upon years of reinforcement.

He settled back to watch over his mates.

For now he'd watch.

~0~

Sammy wanted a bath, a meal and a bed.  Not necessarily in that order.  And he wanted Mikko, he couldn't say why, just that he needed the smaller man to be in sight.

The place they ended up at was a small cabin on a lake and it left Christian edgy for reasons Sammy couldn't explain.

It had running water, sort of, it had a pump anyway.  And it was well supplied.  For a hot bath they had to heat water in a large kettle and Jason was the first one to be bathed because of his injuries.  But it sure as hell beat bathing in a cold stream at this time of year or waiting until they were home.

“Silver?”  Mikko asked as he brought out a small pile of lavender scented bandages.

“Think so.  I don't want to shift again, the first one made me feel so bad.”

Julian just sighed and began daubing the linen with the ointments from Jason's kit and winding them carefully in place with Christian's help.

Vivian was pacing, Theon minding the kettle of water and Sammy was watching Mikko with eerily glowing greenish gold eyes.

“We're going to have to feed you Sammy.”

The glowing eyes shifted off Mikko to pout at Vivian.

“Why?”

“You're eyes are glowing gold.  You changed.”

“I don't feel any different.”

Theon's strangled giggle only made Vivian shoot a clear plea for patience up to any listening deities.

Sammy clarified.

“Okay, I feel like I was run over by the van, and really want a shower and a bed.  But other than that I don't feel different.”

Mikko sighed and rummaged out a small knife.

Then he’d do it the hard way.

He moved closer to Sammy and made a neat short cut in his wrist.

The knife fell to the floor when Sammy moved.

“Shit! Sammy!”  Christian started to move but Sammy's eyes had only flared a brighter gold as he moved and brought the bleeding wound to his lips and latched on.

Sammy fastened his mouth over the wound and wrapped an arm tight around Mikko's hips to pull him close.

Mikko closed his eyes and shivered in Sammy's arms for a moment then let out a soft cry and went limp.

Sammy lapped at the cut, licking it closed as if he'd been a vampire for years, not days at most.

Then he did something strange, he growled at Vivian, swept Mikko up in his arms and bolted outside.

“Don't.” Vivian started then swallowed hard and tugged Theon back to his side.  “Don't follow him.”  The older vampire sounded profoundly shaken.

“Explain.”  Christian was getting heartily tired of feeling like he was missing important facts.

“Mating urge.”

Jason opened his eyes.

“Tell me you're shitting me?”

“I can't.”  Vivian stared out into the night and hugged Theon tightly.

“What are the fucking odds,” breathed Christian softly.

~0~

Mine.

He was Mine.

I wasn't letting anyone else try and claim him; he'd offered me blood, his hand.

He was **_Mine_**.

I'd wanted him before.  I could remember wanting him, wishing I could steal his shirts and bask in his scent.  But he's so much smaller than me, shorter, thinner and so much lighter I wonder that he doesn't break when I take him in my arms.

He's not fighting me.  But his eyes are glowing softly blue in the darkness.

Not human.

I know he's not.

He's mine, it's doesn't matter.

I want skin, I don't care that it's late September and rather cool out.  So his shirt loses all its buttons, the undershirt gets ripped worse.  But I want this, need it.

Need him.

Slender fingers trace my face, over cheekbones to fist in my hair.

“Sammy.”

“Mine.”

The smile is so sad, I want to destroy whatever it is that makes him so sad.

“Sammy, you need to see.”

“I see you.” I don't understand.  He's mine, what else is there?

Then those beautiful blue eyes close.

I feel the power surge and gasp when I see wings unfold.

Soft black bat like wings, my hands are reaching to touch even before they've fully unfurled.  They are softer than I imagined, covered in what feels like sun warmed black velvet.

His eyes open.

He's watching me, poised to flee.

He's mine.

I'm not letting him go.

He gasps when I pull him tighter into my arms and bury my face in his throat.

“ _Sammy_.”

I like how breathless he sounds when he says my name.

But the clothes have got to go.

Skin to skin is perfection; he's so warm, so soft.

I gasp a little when I feel the brush of warm wings wrapping around my back, it echoes the feel of small strong hands clutching at my shoulders.

Yes.

This is right.

I nuzzle his throat, arched back and bared for me.

Just for me.

His blood is potent, sweet, perfection.

I can feel how hard he is, smell his arousal.

I lap at the bite and begin to move down.

He smells musky and sweet, sweaty but still **right** , and he spreads his legs for me.

I don't want to hurt him, but I need him.

So I bite again, high inside his thigh and growl in pleasure when I hear his scream.

I can smell it when he comes, I gather it up, and I want to taste it, taste him.  But have another purpose.

It's not the best lube, and I silently promise him better as I push my fingers up inside.

Inside where I need so badly to be.

He starts to push back.

I can't wait, pushing in has him sobbing, but I know it's not in pain; he's wrapped his legs around me and is pulling me in deeper.

I can't go deeper.

I cling to him and bite again at his sweet throat.

Mine.

All mine.

Then I feel sharp teeth on my own neck and scream as the world lights up from within.

~0~

Julian let out a yelp and huddled down when he felt the power surge.

Christian wished he could jump up to defend his mates but some atavistic terror had him huddled down beside Julian and Jason and staring out into the night.

As quickly as it came, it was gone, leaving them huddled together shaking.

Theon, predictably, found his voice first.  But even he was hoarse and shaken.

“What, the **_fuck_** , was **that**?”

Julian had an answer, and his voice shook as he gave it.

“Nephilium.”

Christian shared a look with Jason.

“I'm going out there.”

Julian let out a whimper and briefly clung to his arm, but when Christian kissed him he let go and just watched with wide frightened blue eyes as Christian walked out.

~0~

Nephilium are dangerous.

As in really fucking dangerous.  Tap dancing through a god damn minefield type dangerous and you don't get the joy of getting dead if something goes boom.

I'm not asking how Julian knows what a Nephilium power pulse feels like.  I really don't think I want to know.  He would have been a child the last time Lillith was seen in this part of the world.

And Lillith is a relatively _nice_ Nephilium.

She took out three Hunts worth of trained and experienced men.  Bing bang really big _boom,_ gone _._

Anything that can do that scares the fuck out of me.

Guardians won't mess with her.

I asked one why, she gave me a look like I was a complete idiot and told me Lillith never targets the innocent, and never attacks unless she's attacked first.

The Hunters I mentioned?

They used a primary school full of kids as bait to get her to come in close enough to try and take out.

None of the kids saw a damn thing.

Only one teacher was killed, and when that was investigated he was found to have been caught molesting a kid in his care.

So, yeah. She scares the _fuck_ out of me.

An unknown scares me worse.  Nephilium are so damn diverse it's not even funny.  Add to that we know so fucking little about them, yeah.  I hate going into a fight blind.

I wish I had Mikko's reference library right now.

If I live through this I'm borrowing every book I can find on the subject.

I'm so freaked out and looking up that I trip over something on the ground.

After I get my heart back where it belongs I look.

Sammy and Mikko.

Curled up together, stark naked and smelling of sex and blood.

Great.

If I wasn't panicking I'd so be taking blackmail shots.

Then I realize it's getting lighter.

Crap.

“Sammy, Sammy!”

There is nothing harder to wake than Sammy when he's out.

Almost nothing more dangerous to wake either.  Sammy hits when he's not quite awake, like he never does when he's fully aware.

And that was as a _human_.

He's changed now.

This could _really_ hurt.

~0~

Christian shook Sammy until the vampire woke with a cranky 'miitaaaaa' and a glare that could peel paint.

Mikko let out a low hiss, and Sammy was suddenly completely awake and fussing over the smaller man.

Christian blinked when Sammy stopped fussing and grimaced.

Mikko had just smiled at him.

Christian took a careful half step back.

“Okay?”  The sky took on a distinct pink cast.  “ _Fuck_ , we need to get you under cover.  **_Now_**.”

Sammy blinked.

“Why?”

Christian wanted to smack him.

“ _Vampire_?  **_Sunlight_**?  Bad in combination about _ninety percent of the time?_ ” He grabbed Sammy's arm and tugged.  “Come on.  I did not drag your big heavy butt back to the van to watch you get crispy your first dawn.”

Mikko smiled at him and Christian tried to shake off the eerie feeling it left him with.  But the shorter blond stood and took Sammy's other arm and they _finally_ got moving back toward the cabin.

They beat the first full rays of dawn, but only just.

And Julian pounced him the instant he was safely inside.

“Jason's awake again.”

“Wish I wasn’t; hurts.”  Jason cracked an eye open.  “Sammy?  Why are you naked?”

“Um.”

“Oh boy, this ought to be good,” groused Vivian, only to freeze when Sammy growled at him.

“Sammy?” Theon froze as soon as he heard the growl.  “Sammy, it's us?  Vivian and Theon?”  Theon gulped at the threatening gold glow behind Sammy's eyes.

“Oh for the love, _Sammy_!”

Mikko thwapped Sammy on the shoulder with a loosely curled fist.

Sammy just growled again.

Mikko let out an exasperated sigh and grabbed his vampire by the ears and kissed him.

Sammy's concentration broke and he was happily kissing back, oblivious to all the observers.

Julian just watched as the pair stared into each other’s eyes, foreheads together. Sammy’s eyes back to their normal placid blue gray.

“Um, explanations?  Please?  Slow human feeling slow here....”

Sammy grimaced and answered Theon's question.

“Sorry, um, how much do you guys know about vampire bonding?”

“Other than from personal experience?”  Theon's tone was more than a touch sharp.

Sammy winced again.

“Uh yeah.”

“You bonded.”  Christian's tone made it clear it wasn't a question.

“Yes?” Sammy sounded terribly meek.

Christian sighed.

“Well fuck.”

~0~

Christian wanted access to Mikko's library.  And as soon as they were back in town had buried himself in it to the point Jason and Julian had resorted to a bit of fooling around without him to pry him away from old pages.  Not dusty though, Mikko had some excellent repair spells that kept book dust to a minimum.

Sammy forgot he'd changed and scared the life out of everyone but Mikko going out after coffee.

Vivian took a decoction every few days that meant he could cope with sunlight, he'd been one of the lucky ones that hadn't reacted with extreme burns, just by turning red, so 'potioning the problem away' was an option for him.  In a few decades he'd probably be able to face sunlight without outside help.

Sammy didn't even turn a little bit pink.

He dealt with sunlight just as he had before conversion.

As in he mostly ignored it.

~0~

Christian waited until they'd settled almost back into their usual routine.  They'd settled down to record an album, partly to vent feelings from the last year and partly to fuel their cover.

He thought he knew what had caused the surge the night Sammy and Mikko had bonded.

He'd just had to wait until he could catch Mikko mostly alone.  He'd seen the bond cues; the man would never be truly alone again in his life.  And he'd live as long as Sammy did, which could prove to be a very long time.

“Your sister was Nephilium.”

Mikko looked up and winced, his blue eyes haunted and sad.

“She was.”

Christian nodded.

“When you helped kill her, you ingested some of her blood.”

Mikko nodded.

“I think that's why Julian sensed a Nephilium when you and Sammy bonded.”

“Oh.”

Christian didn't see the pallor on Mikko's face or the tremor in his hands.

“Just let us know if you sprout wings, okay?”

Mikko gave him a shaky smile.

“You'll be the third to know.”

Christian looked up and smiled.

“After you and Sammy?”

“Yeah.”

~0~

He can't have known.

Of course I swallowed some of my sister's blood.

Our last fight had gone to tooth and talon.

Not like how she's killed our parents.

Aiti had been getting old, even with the bond she had with Isa.  They hadn't done the ritual that would allow her to share Isa's lifespan.

They never got the chance.

Sofi's little dynamite trick made sure they never got the chance.

And Isa had gone all but mad when he felt Aiti die.  Formal bond or no, he didn't survive her long.  He was injured enough that he didn't stand a chance against the Hunters Sofi had pointed our direction.

Christian clearly thinks I beheaded her with some kind of demon slaying blade, which being fair I do own a few.

He doesn't know I tore my own sister's throat out with my teeth and followed that up by ripping her heart out with my bare hands.

Then I held her in my arms and cried like a baby.

She was my little sister

No matter how horrible she'd been she was still my baby sister.

I feel Sammy's arms wrap around me and hear him growl at Christian; hear Christian's snort and his footsteps walking away.

It's only a matter of time now, eventually Sammy Hunt brothers will put the pieces in the proper order and I'd lose him.

 _~You aren't losing me yet.  I just found you and I'm not letting go.~_

I lean into his chest and bury my face in his shoulder.  The Edict says 'Thou Shalt Serve.'

And as long as there is breath in my body I _will_ serve.

And Sammy will serve right with me. I _choose_ to serve by _his_ side.


	3. The New Bitch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bazie rescues a dog from a beating, then learns she's not exactly the bitch he thought she was.
> 
> covers a time period from before Summoner and Slayer to Nephilium

Bazie was sickened.  He’d found the poor mutt being beaten half to death in the alley behind their venue.  The two guys who had been beating her bailed out and ran like hell when he’d yelled. But that had left him with no one to vent his rage on.

So he’d turned to the poor thing and scooped her up from the spot she crawled to try and hide and carried her backstage.  He’d expected her to try and bite, but all she did was let out a low whine of pain and shiver in his arms.  That alone should have set off warnings in his mind.  But it took Archzie stopping dead and sniffing intently before spearing him with a look before he registered what he had shaking in his arms might not just be a starved and abused dog.

“Who’s the new bitch?”

He wasn’t being cruel.  It was just the wolf in him coming out and wanting information.

“I found her getting beaten out back.”

Archzie let out a low, rude scoffing noise.  At least until he got closer and saw something Bazie had ignored; the odd harness she wore.  He half recoiled from her then, but was right back stroking a comforting hand over the thin fur over her head.

“Fuck.  Bazie?  You got your knife?”

Bazie gave his long time friend and band mate a puzzled look.

“In my left hip pocket.  Why?”

“This _thing_ need to come off.”  The tone was sickened contempt, and he just barely touched the harness like it was contaminated with something impossibly foul.  It was filthy, but no more than the poor animal it was attached to. He was a bit surprised the poor thing didn't have fleas she was so dirty.

Bazie hurried a bit and settled the creature on a couch that was so old and dirty that she was unlikely to add anything new to its cover, and fished out his knife.

Three cuts and the harness was off and being flung away.

The dog shuddered and shifted into a filthy and painfully thin girl.  Archzie had his jacket off and was wrapping it around her nude form with a low growl.  Not the type the band knew as threatening, the one he used for comfort.

Bazie felt his stomach drop; no werewolf should ever be cowering in terror.  This girl had to have been treated badly for a long time to beat down the natural arrogance of her species.  She wouldn’t even look up at any of them

“How bad?”

Archzie was sniffing the girl over, and she was too freaked out to even try and scent him back.  All she did was try and curl into a smaller ball.

“Bruises, old breaks to her ribs.  Couple changes will fix that.  Filthy, but being kept in a slave harness,” the hiss told Bazie more than words could.  “No rape smells though.”

Bazie let out a low sigh of relief.  That was one less worry at least.

“Dude?  What the **_fuck_** is _this_ nasty thing?”

Jussi. 

Archzie sighed and Bazie closed his eyes in a mute plea for divine intervention.

It wasn’t answered, but then it never was.  The best they got was Jyrki intervening and he frequently either couldn't or wouldn't.

Jussi had a disgusted look on his face as he toed the remains of the harness with one boot.  But he was the sensitive of the group, much to everyone’s amusement and his frequent annoyance.

“It’s a slave harness Jussi.”

Jussi recoiled and made a sickened noise.

“Burn it man.  That things gross.”  Then he turned and saw the girl.  His shoulders dropped and he got a look on his face that was a mix of resignation, relief and something indescribable.  Most of the time Bazie thought it was a mix of relief and disappointment.

“Not _another_ one Archzie.”

“It wasn’t him, it was me this time.”

Those blue eyes shifted the mix of resignation and disappointment over to Bazie.

“Bazie, man, we can’t keep rescuing every stray we come across.”

He wasn’t really as unhappy as he sounded.  Bazie knew if he’d been the one in the alley earlier he’d have done the same thing, probably with a lot more and a lot _louder_ yelling.

Bazie felt his gut twist though when, as Jussi approached the girl huddled into Archzie's side, she tried to back away from him.  Jussi frowned and tried to catch her eyes but she was in full submissive mode and wouldn’t even look up.

“Jussi?”

Of course Jussi’s half yell earlier got Jyrki’s attention.  And while Bazie wasn’t a submissive vampire by his nature even he freely acknowledged that Jyrki was the leader of their little kiss.

When he ordered the girl to look at him even Bazie could smell her fear.  And even with the power backing his words Jyrki had to catch the girls chin and force her to look up at him.  Part of why Jyrki was the acknowledged leader was his ability to discern things just from staring into a person’s eyes.

She had green eyes.

After a long stare down where the poor girl kept trying to look away to acknowledge Jyrki’s dominance Jyrki let her go with a sigh.  She huddled right back into Archzie's side and tried to hide herself completely inside his jacket.

“Timo,”

Timo-timo had been lurking in the doorway as was his habit when there was shuffling of the group order.

“Yeah boss?”  It was an old joke, but this time Jyrki didn’t do more than sigh.

“Grab a set of my sweats, she’s too tall to fit anyone else’s, Archzie, get her cleaned up.  Jussi, Bazie and I will make sure we’ve got everything and the crew is packed and ready to go.”

And that was it.  They had another person on the bus.

All they had to do was get her clean, dressed and actually _on_ the bus.  And do it without traumatizing her worse.

That could be challenging, especially given she'd been held in wolf shape for so long her legs wouldn't bear her weight walking upright when Archzie tried nudging her toward the shower.

~0~

Archzie settled for carrying her into the venue’s shower.  Bazie decided he wasn’t going to ask, he just parked himself in front of the doors and stood guard.  But he did wonder just what Jyrki had seen that made him decide they were her best option.  Normally their foundlings went into the hands of someone in their close circle of friends.

Someone _not_ on the road, putting people back together tended to be hard on folks already stressed by traveling.  And that was the _people_ , people you could talk to.  Jonne still teased them about the last litter of kittens they'd pawned off on him; never mind that one still lived with him and had made fan girls squee themselves to death from the cutes of him getting caught by Jay's camera with the little thing curled up on his shoulder asleep.

~0~

Clean her hair was a dark red blond and her skin pale.  She was accepting Archzie for now, but Bazie suspected that was simply because Archzie was another werewolf.  On the good side that meant she was pretty calm, and managed to get back to moving normally fairly quickly.  But Bazie wondered if she'd ever lose the slight hunch to her shoulders or the slight limp she had.

On the down side she was quiet and would do whatever she was told, to the point of dropping one task to pick up another if she wasn't told she could finish the first one first.  And **that** drove some of the crew guys crazy.  Ville had gone to Jyrki yelling about them picking up a fucked up sub and how he wasn’t paid to deal with it.  But Jyrki had pulled him aside and apparently cleared the air in his usual direct way.  Bazie noticed afterwards that the crew was being careful to teach her things about how the shows ran.

It was still more than a month before Bazie realized she was at all musical.

A piano behind a regular venue and Jyrki had been playing around on it something so normal none of them had thought about it, or noticed the wistful look on their foundlings face.  Later, when they’d been being charming for the fan girls he’d heard music.  Imperfect, broken music, like someone who hadn’t played in years was trying to pick it up again.

Jyrki had heard it too, and excused himself from the clutch of worshipful girls.  Bazie had managed to follow and saw the girl they’d taken to calling Luna carefully picking out a tune on the piano.  Bazie closed his eyes.

She was playing Brahms lullaby.

At least she was until Jyrki startled her.  Then she was cowering under the piano bench like she expected to be beaten again.

This time Jyrki just moved the bench, scooped her up in his arms and hugged her closely.  Bazie didn’t hear all of what he whispered to her, but he did hear a firm injunction for her to ‘never be ashamed of her music.’

It would prove to be a turning point.

~0~

Bazie found out she could play guitar because he caught her changing out strings on he and Timo’s guitars after a show.  She was playing a little to make sure of the tuning of each guitar before wiping it down and carefully packing it away.  They’d be back here tomorrow night; otherwise he knew she’d have fully loosened all the strings just to keep the guitars from being damaged in transit.  He'd heard Aipo's lecture on the subject often enough.

He smiled a bit as he heard bits of several of their songs.  Not perfect, not by a long shot, but at some point she’d played.

She was fighting with a few bars from Never Say Die when he gave in to the impulse and settled behind her.  She jumped but he shushed her gently and wrapped his arms around her and the guitar.  A bit of prodding got her fingers back on the strings and he began walking her through the song.

Slowly she relaxed and Bazie smiled a little into her hair.

~0~

It became a bus ritual, rather like Jussi being a cute little snot and getting Jyrki to chase him around the bus until Jussi wanted to get caught.  Bazie would curl up behind Luna and teach her more guitar chords.  Archzie began teaching her his bass lines when he realized exactly what Bazie was doing.

Slowly she shied away from sudden moves less.  Slowly she began to speak more than just when spoken to, her voice was a battered alto, and she’d never sing, but she was at least speaking.  It would just take time before she spoke in anything but a near whisper.

She let Jussi cuddle her and Jussi taught her drums.  His tech Jahno was a bit bemused, but accepted her help.  She at least learned quickly and tried to not get in the way.

It was a true turnign point when one of the temporary roadies theyhad for a show in Russia fucked something up and tried to pass it onf on her and Joni.  She actually snarled at him, but Joni was the youngest member of the regular crew.  Archzie called the kid cob, and clearly Luna wasn't letting any outsider mess with the packs cubs.  Even if the 'pack' was a nit of a mesed up one and teh 'cub' in question was legal as far as human drinking laws was concerend.

Then when Jyrki wanted to know what the problem was she didn’t back down and let the jerk walk over her.

She defended herself.  More she defended the regular crew, but she didn’t just back down and slink away when the guy got in her face.

The guy never did figure out why Jyrki smiled like he did that night, even with the fuckup making them start almost an hour later than planned.

She still came up to Jyrki afterwards in a submissive stance, but she relaxed into his side when he hugged her tight and told her she’d been right.

That had bothered Bazie a bit until Archzie explained it.

“Jyrki is Alpha. “ Archzie shrugged and slouched a bit deeper into the couch in the bus’s front lounge.  “We’re social as fuck, but we all look to an Alpha.  Whoever her Alpha was before, well if I meet him I’m challenging.  He‘s a sick fucker.  She’s setting Jyrki as Alpha in her head, and trying to make him happy just like she would if we were a regular Pack.”

“Archzie, were vampires, not wolves.”

Archzie shrugged at Timo’s dry observation.

“You’re still _my_ Pack fuckhead.  If we’re alone we’ll form pack bonds with humans or even regular wolves.  Alone, well, we go a little crazy alone.”  He took a slug of his beer.  “We just aren’t wired to be solitary.”

~0~

Wolf weirdness cropped up again when a year later they learned that if Luna changed she _couldn’t_ change right back.  Archzie could change right back but he’d turn into a hyper menace worse than Jussi on sugar, caffeine _and_ vodka.  So wherever it was possible they'd hedge and deflect folks until Archzie could run and get some of the change surge out of his system.

Luna _couldn’t_ change right back.  And Jyrki’s gentle injunction for her to shift back just had her huddling at his feet in an unhappy ball of red gold fur.  So she clearly _wanted_ to obey.

Archzie sighed and changed.  Then he nudged her with his muzzle until she was standing how he wanted.

“ ** _Archzie_**!” Timo yelped in shock when he mounted her and began vigorously fucking.

Jyrki just slapped a hand over his eyes and sighed.

“I want an explanation for this when you are finished.”  Jyrki’s tone was bland.

Jussi and Bazie both just stood there gaping in shock as their friend pounded away doggie style, rather literally.

Before too long the wolves broke apart, and fell back into human shape, with Luna falling to curl in a shivering ball on the floor and Archzie falling backwards to lie panting and staring up at the ceiling.

Jyrki nudged him with one boot and coughed pointedly as Jussi and Bazie both went to their knees to cradle Luna between them.

“Sex is a _great_ way to burn change energy.  You okay girl?”

A small affirmative answer came from Luna as she buried her burning face in Bazie’s shoulder.

“So that wasn’t what it looked like?”

Archzie let out a low huff and sat up.

“It wasn’t rape, if that’s what you’re asking.  She may be smaller than me, but if she wants to get away she can.  If Luna decides to run, no way _in hell_ can I catch her.” There was a grimace Bazie wanted an explanation for, then Archzie continued.  “She’s also fast enough to hurt me pretty bad before she runs.”

Jyrki sighed and pulled his sunglasses down to lock eyes with Archzie, then he went down to one knee and lifted Luna’s chin to look into her eyes.  Her blush darkened, but when he offered she went right into his arms and nuzzled under his jaw.

Beta submitting to Alpha.  In her mind at least all was mostly right in the world, even if they were embarrassing the crap out of her human side.

~0~

In the darkness of the bus Jussi whispered the question that had been nagging him all night.

“Does it feel good?”

Bazie bit his lip and worried at the stud he’d worn to bed at the befuddled and questioning grunt out of Archzie.  But Jussi clarified.

“Fucking her, as a wolf, does it feel good?”

“Jussi, its **_sex_**.  Of course it feels good.” 

Bazie could hear the strangled snicker from Timo and had to swallow hard to keep his own laughter behind his teeth.

“So how come you came back out of wolf shape fully dressed?”

The pained sigh and sound of Archzie rolling over had Bazie inching closer to the edge of his bunk to listen in.

“I wear leather, linen and cotton Jussi, things that change with me.”

“So that’s why Luna stole that pair of pants Jyrki hated?”

“Yes Jussi.”

“So why do the coffin girls hate her?”

If Archzie knew the answer to that… Bazie stopped and listened, it sounded like Archzie **did** know why the coffin girls had a perpetual twitch.

“She isn’t one of them Jussi.  And they are _human_ ; they see how she acts with us and apply human reasoning and motivations to it.  Human anything doesn’t apply well to werewolves.  We don’t think like humans do, we have a whole different set of social codes and norms.  Some of it is simple jealousy because Jyrki is letting her get closer than they can get and she can cuddle into him and not get a brush off like most of them get.  Some is contempt because they see her submissive wolf behavior as over the top; see it as her having no self respect at all and whoring herself to get close to the band.”

There was a long moment of silence.

“Luna’s not a whore like that.”

Bazie winced.  She wasn’t, she was a badly abused lycan who was only just recovering.

~0~

Coffin girls came and went; none of them were part of the regular crew.  They came from the elite of the fan clubs in each city they passed through. Very occasionally they were allowed to travel a short hop with the band, but that was only a very select few who had proved they could be trusted a bit further than the rest of the common mob.

Outsiders wanted to know why they had a coffin girl who wasn’t in skin tight leather or scanty clothing.  Katerine, one of the few who had ever traveled more than once with the band, laughed at the interviewer and told him Luna wasn’t ‘one of them’, and thus the rumor that she was some cousin of Archzie was born.  It was mostly based on the fact Archzie was protective of her in a way that seemed to translate over into human body language as protective of family.  Add in a few out of context comments and journalists who should know better were reporting the so called fact.

That proved rather troublesome when Archzie’s very human wife had scoffed and informed the world Archzie didn’t _have_ any female cousins.

He did, quite a number of them, just not any _she_ knew about.

Bazie often wondered why Archzie had married a human.  Timo had married before his Change, and his wife was one of the lucky few who could bond to a vampire as a more permanent mate.  Timo’s youngest daughter was a born vampire, proof, not that the band needed it, that his wife was his match.

But Archzie’s wife wasn’t his mate.

Bazie looked over to where Luna was working on getting the lights timing sorted out and glanced back at the three coffin girls for this show.

The contrast couldn’t be greater.  Luna was in loose leather trousers, the same ones she’d ‘borrowed’ from Jyrki over a year ago and an oversized cotton band shirt.  They’d found leather soled boots for her at the same place Archzie got his so when she changed she didn’t destroy things or leave them lying places.  So far they’d only found one set of sneakers that were made of 100% natural rubber and fabrics, and she was only wearing those if it was wet out.  It didn’t help that the only set in her size was purple with little heart-a-grams on them.  Valo had teased Jyrki mercilessly when he’d seen them.

The coffin girls were in thigh high stockings or fishnets, short tight leather and latex skirts, low cut tops and high heels.  They had tons of makeup on and their hair was creative Goth to say the least.  All three had some ink decorating their skin, mostly brilliantly colored.

Luna’s red blond hair was in a rough ponytail and there wasn’t a drop of makeup on her.  What little ink she had was hidden, a series of numbers and letters on her left ankle, hidden by her boot.  They'd learned they were United States lycanthrope registration numbers, something that added to the mystery of her past.  A past she either didn't remember or didn't _want_ to remember.  Jyrki had requested information based on those numbers, but so far they hadn’t heard anything back.  But if their suspicions on her age were correct they might not hear anything until Luna herself asked, The US privacy laws could be odd like that.

The coffin girls weren’t paying any attention to him, but Luna looked up after a moment of his resting his eyes on her.  Ville looked up a breath later and gave her a nod.  Bazie had to smile a little as she trotted over and settled into his side.

He hugged her and briefly nuzzled his nose into her hair then asked her to make sure Jussi and Jurki had fed.

The little nuzzles under his jaw made him smile a little, but he let her go after dropping a small kiss on her head.

He had to make sure he fed before the show as well.

And he had his eye on a pretty little fan girl, he just had to get her to go out back with him.

~0~

Jussi was closest and heard the strangled scream that was far too low pitched to be any of the girls they'd let the management bring in.  Closest but not the fastest to react as Luna beat him to the back door by a respectable amount. Jyrki had also beaten him to the door, but he was just too damn tall anyway.

For a wonder once Luna cleared the door she stayed human.  The last time she'd reacted to someone screaming she'd shifted to wolf almost instantly, at least Bazie had been close enough to catch her scruff that time so she hadn't maimed the either of the girls who had been fighting.

Jussi winced as their normally quiet and nonviolent tech backhanded the girl standing over Bazie soundly before slamming to her knees beside the fallen guitarist to put pressure on his bleeding wounds.

Jyrki hauled the girl upright and shoved her at Jussi with an injunction to have her looked at and held for questioning.

Jussi huffed but obeyed and dragged the girl off to get looked over by the paramedics.  She wasn't acting quite all there, but he'd dealt with fans that were drunk or stoned before.  He just wished she didn't smell so funny, the spilled blood was making his stomach churn in revolt.

Two of the paramedics had her strapped to a gurney and an IV into her before Jussi got what little he knew about things out.

The third heard Bazie was bleeding and swore, grabbing the cooler of emergency blood bags and was moving faster than Jussi had even seen a human move before.

He blinked then blanched and took off after him when he realized what the man must have decided happened.  If Bazie really did freak out and attack anyone nearby a normal human was so much meat.

But once he caught up Bazie was curled up half around Luna and half in her arms, still bleeding but coherent enough to let the paramedic run an IV to start getting blood back in his system.

And given the amount of blood sprayed all over the brick wall and spilled over the pavement of the alley that wasn't something Jussi expected.

~0~

Jyrki frowned intently as Sebastian worked on Bazie.  Mostly he was making sure things were back in more or less the right position and changing blood bags, leaving the rest to Bazie's natural vampire healing.  What had him more concerned was how the girl that had attacked Bazie had gotten through the screening process, how she'd shielded the stink of silver nitrate and garlic until it was too late and Bazie was already in blood frenzy after the attack and why in the name of all darkness and little demons he'd come up to find his guitarist with his fangs buried in the throat of a lycan.

A _willing_ lycan at that.

Luna was pale and was trembling but she was letting Bazie cling to her, Jyrki let out a soft snort.  The clinging really was rather mutual, but still.

Archzie would gladly have fed Bazie, but the vast majority of werewolves just weren't compatible with vampires for feeding.  He'd done an exploratory bite once, right after they'd formed the band and dearly as he loved Archzie as a brother he'd rather feed on rats than bite him for blood ever again.  Jussi was compatible, but Jussi was an extreme rarity, the offspring of a vampire and lycan mating.  He was blood compatible, could change shape _and_ feed for blood.

Six bags in and Ian came charging up to hiss something urgently in Sebastian's ear. Something that had him making the face he only ever made when he was fighting to not swear.

A moment later and the alley was swarming with emergency personnel and Jyrki was helplessly watching two of his own being carried off.

~0~

The good news when they finally got to the hospital was that Bazie would be alright.  The blood bags Sebastian had gotten into his system had made the difference and with the extenders and specialty stuff they had for vampires they'd gotten the silver and garlic out of Bazie enough that he was asleep and healing.  At a slower rate than he usually did, but given how he'd been bled and poisoned far better than expected.

Luna was also going to be alright, but they didn't have any blood to drop into her, lycan blood types were just enough off human to be dangerous to mix them and hers was a rare type anyway so they'd had to make do with standard extenders and letting her recover the old fashioned way.

What was driving the hospital staff bonkers was that Bazie had a firm hold on her wrist and nothing they did had him letting go. 

Jyrki sighed as he looked in at where the staff had given up and shoved the two beds together.  Bazie looked dead to the world asleep, half curled into Luna's arms.  The position was odd; normally Luna had her head tucked under Bazie's chin and spine nestled into his chest, not the other way around.  But at least both his people were okay.

Archzie let out a low snort and shook his head.

“Okay Jussi, you're right, that's stupid cute.”

Jyrki sighed again when he heard his bassist digging out his wallet to pay the forfeit in whatever bet he and Jussi had made. Then his eyes narrowed; he'd thought Luna was asleep, but when a nurse came in to change blood bags on Bazie her eyes opened and followed every move the nurse made.  She didn't interfere, just watched very intently with eyes that held a faint eerie glow behind them.

“Holy fuck.”

Jussi had clearly seen the same thing he had and from the sudden and sharp inhalation from Archzie he'd seen it as well.

“Explanation please?”  He knew what that meant in vampires, lycan were a rather different matter.

Archzie held silent for a long moment, long enough that the rest of the band had turned to look at him while he collected his thoughts.

“Pack bond.  She's got a full pack bond with Bazie.”

Jussi gave Archzie a confused look, and then spoke slowly.

“I thought she already considered us pack.”

Archzie raked his hands through his hair.

“She does, but she only had a full pack bond with me, I thought anyway.”

“Hunh?”  Timo, late to the conversation and hands full of little paper cups of coffee.  “Okay, I'm late here, but **_what_**?”

Jyrki sighed and herded everyone over to a small seating area.  This he thought might be a good thing to sit down for.

~0~

Jyrki paced, apparently just the fact he'd been the one to rescue her had made an imprint in Luna's lycan brain.  Archzie was a lycan and moderately alpha so she submitted to him as naturally as breathing even before he'd had to fuck her back to human.  The sex had just cemented things.  Archzie submitted to him, and Jyrki raked his hands through his hair.  How he'd ended up alpha wolf was just making his head hurt.  He’d never had this issue before in all three hundred odd years of his life, and the novelty wasn’t something he was quite sure he was enjoying as much as he probably should be.

And the doctors wanted Bazie under observation for at least another seventy two hours.  They had shows set; Ville didn't know all the new songs yet, not from Bazie's position.

He felt a warm body behind him and turned.

Luna; recovered enough that she was moving without wobbling even if she was still a bit pale and Archzie was sneaking her rare meat over the bland hospital fare to help fix that little issue.  He'd walked in on Archzie bringing her rabbits and standing over her until she ate them, then had curled up around her for a while.

At least he hadn't caught Archzie fucking her back to human, that had been bad enough the first time.

He opened his arms and felt her snuggle into his side and nuzzle under his jaw, an action he hadn't thought about until last night and Archzie's explanations.  An action that now had a lot more behind it than he'd ever realized.

That didn't stop him from cuddling her and burying a nose in her hair.

Her actions had saved one of his best friends from blood frenzy, from the inquisition that always followed and probable death either as a judgment or from the poisoning he'd suffered.  Now they just had to get through the aftermath.

There was still an inquisition, but Bazie was safe from any punishments.  The girl who poisoned him had so far refused to say why she'd tried to kill Bazie; Archzie had made some grumbles about stupid girls not realizing that their fantasies had no business intruding on his reality and that made him wonder what the lycan had heard with his keen hearing.

At least as far as the outside world was concerned Bazie just had been flattened by a killer case of food poisoning.  They hadn't been put in the situation where they had to tell the world they were actually vampires and that it wasn't just a joke.

At least they were all properly registered in the countries that required such things.

Though explaining why Luna and Archzie had rabies tags was something he never wanted to do again.  Thank all the little gods that the Hunter Obscurity Act had been taken up as law by the EU.  American Hunters had made it plain that it was just too useful when the vast majority of Normal’s only thought demon attacks were a rarity and creature attacks were the stuff of the fevered minds of movie makers.

“Jyrki?”

Jyrki felt his eyes pop open, Luna rarely called him by his name to his face. She was chewing her lip and looking anywhere but at his face until he caught her chin and made her look up at him.

Looking into those shadowed green eyes still made his chest hurt, that there were children being used as he suspected she had been and there was nothing he could do hurt. UNICEF was for human children, at least mostly.  Most lycan would never risk their cubs, not willingly.  And he knew the few still in Africa had migrated as far out of the drought and war zones as they possibly could.

But that wasn't a concern right this second.

“Luna?”

She blinked and looked down then to his shock looked right back up into his eyes.

“I can play for Bazie.  What Ville doesn't know?  He was teaching me.”

His first impulse was to hug her tightly.  Then he held her still painfully thin shoulders in his hands.

“You're sure?  You know how the fans get.”

She swallowed hard and nodded.

“As long as they know he'll be back as soon as he's well, I think, I hope they'll understand.  He, Bazie, he wouldn't want them to not have a good show.”

And just like that, he had one less problem.

~0~

She hadn't dressed any different than normal, just in the loose leather trousers that Jyrki was glad someone liked because he'd hated them, and an oversized cotton band shirt. Her concession to the stage was to leave her hair loose, but Jyrki suspected that was just so she could half hide behind it.

For several songs Timo took the lead line and let Luna hang back by Jussi's drums and carry rhythm.  Archzie ran a bit of interference for the front row but there was only so much they could do given the stages tended to be small.

At least the vast majority of the fans had been understanding, especially when Jyrki told them an edited version of what had happened, with it being Chinese food and not a selfish and delusional little fan girl.

He'd been sorely tempted to strangle the girl when she finally confessed that she'd wanted Bazie all to herself and there was no other way to keep him 'safe' from other girls.

Bazie hadn't been thrilled with the revelation either, but he at least was recovering and other than needing to feed on top of having blood bags dumped into him was coping fairly well.

At least he was safe on the bus again, even if his new preferred sleeping place was in the front lounge with Luna curled up against his chest.  The pictures reminded Jyrki rather painfully of how he and Jussi slept when they were in a hotel or otherwise away from home, curled around each other.  At home Valo tended to snuggle in and Jyrki was doing a slow courtship of Burton.  Not that Burton had registered that little fact yet.

At least Valo knew the score.  He had no idea if Burton knew about Hunters or why they still existed in the world.  The rest of Valo's band knew, but Burton was human, so it was anyone's guess.

~0~

Finishing the tour and going home to record again was a pointed reminder that they had a new member, one that didn't have a place of her own.

For the first few weeks Luna curled up on Jussi's couch.  The first night Jyrki had barely been able to fight down a smile over how badly Jussi's favorite pink fuzzy throw clashed with Luna's hair.  Then there was the reality of getting her properly documented so she could actually get _paid_ as a member of the crew.

Ville kept teaching her sound, and she was getting good enough that she could help out other bands.  The first time Jyrki got a call from the guys at Clubi he'd been floored and a little concerned that she'd felt she had to go out and earn her keep.  Then he'd learned she'd stepped up to help one of Ville's friends and that Matthau wanted to know if she was free to do a short touring run with his crew.

He'd been leery of letting her get anywhere to near the man or his older brother, both men rather to well known for their problems with drugs.  But she'd been wary enough to not let the fast talker back her into anything.  Wary enough that Christus had called, and sounding far more sober and sane than Jyrki remembered, asked if she'd just been through a 'bad breakup'.

Jyrki hadn't been sure how to answer and found himself getting talked into coffee with the man.

~0~

Christus breathed in the fragrant steam from his coffee and smiled at Japa as the other man teased him about his fondness for caffeine.  No addiction jokes though, his friend loved him too much and was far too sensitive to the connotations of the word after helping Christus through drug rehab a second time.

“So he agreed?”

“Yeah, Jyrki.” Christus stopped and sucked on his teeth for a moment as he collected his thoughts. “He seemed concerned that Matthau was interested in her.”

Japa grimaced.  “She's not exactly Matthau's type.”

Christus grinned.  “Too smart?  To quiet?”

“Something like, she's not, what's the word?  Super-model pretty?”

Christus felt his face fall, his brother was far too well known for being shallow when it came to girls.

“No.”  He stared down into his cup.  “She's not, but she's got something,” he looked up into his friends’ eyes with a crooked smile. “You felt it too.”

Japa nodded and took a cautious sip from his cup.

“She's got something, and Bazie would be displeased to find anyone hurting her for play.”

Christus yelped and barely kept himself from spilling his coffee all over his hands.  Japa was similarly startled and let out a squeak and a sharp yelp as he slopped a few hot droplets over his hands and the tabletop.

When he looked up and back to the owner of the voice that had made them both jump Christus let out a purely mental groan.  Jyrki was doing his big brother thing and scowling down at them both over his sunglasses.  The finger tapping on his sleeve made him wonder how long Jyrki had been listening in.

“Um,”

Japa snorted at him and carefully took another sip from his cup then sighed and reached for a napkin to mop up the spilled bits.  “Great start there Jukka.”

“I don't see _you_ defending yourself.”

“I wasn't the one who flirted with her and got shot down”

“Who was flirting...”  Jyrki's voice went ice cold.

“Matthau,” Christus felt himself smiling at how his younger brother had gotten ignored every time he flirted.

“Really.”

Japa was grinning like a lunatic. Christus suddenly was glad he hadn't tried actively flirting with the girl, Jyrki's tone was glacial.

“She told him no, he's not used to getting told no.”  Japa shrugged and took another sip from his cup.

Christus was about to do the same when saw the girl in question coming in with a painfully familiar person.

Jonne.

Jonne, laughing, his face flushed from the cold.  Christus felt his words freeze and for a long moment it felt like his heart had stopped.

Japa saw the look on his face and turned in his seat to see what had put that look of pained longing on his friends face.

“Fuck.  Jukka?  It's okay.”

Christus was trying to smile when he heard a familiar squeal and felt a much missed pair of arms wrapping around his shoulders from behind.

“Christus!  God, you are looking _wonderful_.  Luna said she'd seen you last night at Clubi.”

Christus blinked stinging eyes and managed a wobbly smile as he turned and found himself with an armful of happy singer.

While he was distracted Japa watched as Luna cuddled into Jyrki's side and gave him a tiny affectionate nip under his jaw.

A set of behaviors that had part of his mind sitting up and taking notice, especially given Jyrki nuzzled her hair and caught the back of her neck with one hand and gave a gentle shake.

~0~

Christus was still wobbly the next afternoon, Jonne had swept in and after throwing Jyrki for a loop had wheedled an afternoon with Christus.  Japa thought it was cute, just because he preferred to fuck girls didn't mean he was blind.

But it also didn’t mean that he wouldn’t be kicking a certain singers little butt if he had to piece Christus back together after a broken heart.

“Okay, spill.”

Christus lit up and grinned happily.

“They are going a pick up gig Friday night at Clubi, and Larry will be there.”

Japa sighed.  Joy that meant Christus had been invited and the terror trio would be all but making out on stage.

“And?”

Christus wriggled in his seat and was off on a cheerful babble.  Apparently the rest of Negative had ‘dropped in’ on their date and managed to keep Christus and Jonne from doing more than a bit of kissing.

“Jukka?”  Japa asked when Christus finally wound down.

“Mmm?” asked Christus as he took a sip of his coffee.

“How did you come to be in the company of a lycan?”

It was a good thing he hadn’t sat directly across from his friend as Christus choked and spat his coffee across the table in shock.

~0~

“Luna’s not a monster.”  The reaction was pure reflex.

Japa just smiled as he helped mop up the mess Christus had just caused.

“I didn’t imply she was.  Just after Larry’s conversion you got twitchy as hell about creatures.”

“It just _hurt_ , watching him go through all that, and then having to leave the band.”

The wince on Japa’s face made Christus wince himself, seeing a good friend going through hell had brought up all the hurtful memories of his own departure from the band.  He was just profoundly grateful that he’d learned who his real friends were.

Some of his real friends had turned up in surprising places.  Jonne and his brothers; Tommi and Ville, the guys from Negative; Jay, Snack, Antti and Hata. Japa, Sammy, even a few others from the old Tampere scene.  People who when they learned he was going through rehab had written letters, sent pictures and when they could had turned up to deliver hugs and words of support in person.

And he was finding new friends.

Like shy little Luna.

Warm hands covered his as Japa reached for him, his eyes conveying only concern.

“Jukka, lycan are different socially, I don’t want you to think you’re just being friends when her pack thinks you are offering something else.”

That let Christus smile back without fear or reservation.

“Japa, her pack is the 69 Eyes.”

Japa gave him a wary look.

“Jukka, there a bunch of fake vampires.”

He couldn’t help it he broke up giggling.  That was enough that Japa was moving beside him to put a sheltering arm around his shoulders.

It felt good to just laugh.  But eventually he calmed and whispered in Japa’s ear.

“They _are_ vampires, except for Archzie.  Lauri told me.”

The way Japa’s eyes went round set him off again.

~0~

Bazie let out a low grumble as he was jostled yet again.  He’d given up on mixed drinks and had fallen back on beer in bottles or sodas in cans, they spilled a lot less when people bumped into him.

He’d at least had a moderately good night on stage.  Jyrki had been the one Jussi had targeted for mischief and his antics had left the rest of the band both unscathed and laughing themselves half stupid.

He just wanted to know where Jussi had found a _black_ fluffy cotton bunny tail and how he’d managed to stick it on Jyrki’s trousers without the taller man noticing.  The screams from the fan girls when he'd waggled his ass during _Never Say Die_ had been painful.

Bazie let out another low growl when he got jostled again.  This time he gave up and began scanning the room for a seat at a table, they had enough friends here he was sure he could scam a spot.

His eyes skipped over a familiar head of red blond hair then snapped right back.

Luna.

Curled up in a booth between Jonne and Larry.

And Larry Love was flirting.

Bazie felt his eyes narrow and growled low in his throat as he went stalking across the room.

~0~

“Uh oh, cranky guitarist at ten o’clock.”

“ ** _What?_**   Antti you need to stop watching so many silly spy films.”

Jonne giggled at Hata’s complaint as he turned in the general direction Antti had indicated.

Then his breath froze.  Bazie, with a glare that was sending people in his path scuttling out of the way, was stalking directly toward them.

And he’d caught the faint flash of red in Bazie’s eyes.  Not just a cranky guitarist, a cranky _vampire_.

Worse Jonne heard the low growl from Larry.

This could get rather unpleasant.

~0~

Larry had been watching the other vampires in the room.  He’d almost killed himself laughing when he realized the Helsinki vampires really were vampires and it wasn’t just some shtick. He’d sobered when he learned that Jyrki was over three hundred years old and that Jussi was considerably younger and was suspected to be the elder’s mate.  He’d heard rumors of Timo-timo’s conversion and that last fall there had been a dust up with Bazie and a fan girl. 

The official line to the fans and the general public had been food poisoning.  The gray area between the two stories left him feeling more than a little bit ill.

He’d been trying to ignore it, he’d found a girl who hit all his buttons, pretty in an understated way, quiet but clearly familiar with music and musicians and she could talk intelligently about the subjects he cared about.  Even better she hadn’t gushed at him.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to steal my tech back.”  The tone was just a bit off, even though the words were civil.

Jonne though scooted out of the booth and let Luna shift.

She was a tech?

That explained a lot.

Then he noticed the little nuzzle under Bazie’s jaw and the way the other guitarist breathed in the girls scent.

She had smelled awfully good.

He gulped when he realized he’d been growling.  Antti, Hata and Jonne were watching him with eyes gone round.

Bazie still had a protective arm around Luna but managed a tight but crooked smile.

“Let’s go out back.  There are things I think you need to know.”

Larry gulped and nodded and scooted out of the booth.

As they were headed for the back door the bands used he heard Antti ask in a shaky voice.

“Sooo, was it me or are two vamps in a small space scary as fuck?”

~0~

Bazie was relieved that Luna looked right up at him as her backed her into the wall on the alley behind Clubi.  Further down he could hear Jonne’s little brother laughing and the faint sounds of Jyrki convincing a girl he’d had a nip from that they’d just been necking a bit.

He knew he was being irrational, and from the way Luna tipped her head to expose her throat a bit more in invitation she clearly thought he was just hungry.

He just leaned into her and buried his face in her shoulder for a long moment.

“So, you wanna explain why I just turned into a snarly grouch?”

Bazie sighed and straightened as he turned to face the younger vampire.

“Larry, this is Luna 69, our new bitch.”

Larry stiffened and opened his mouth to protest.

“She’s a lycan Larry, it’s not an insult.”

Larry deflated almost immediately.

“Uh, okay, so what's that got to do with me snarling?”

Bazie smiled faintly.

“She's blood compatible.”

The range of looks that flitted across Larry's face was amusing.  The startlement was amusing, that it then shifted through confusion; shock and faint horror made him want to laugh.  Clearly he'd just realized why he'd gone snarly and protective.  Poor fledgling needed to feed and hadn't realized.

Then Larry did something that made Bazie up his opinion considerably.

He formally asked permission for a test feed.

Luna looked up at him and Bazie nodded, so she extended her wrist.

The bite was barely there, and Bazie sighed a bit.  There was such a thing as being too timid of a feeder, but Larry swallowed, once, twice three times as was licking the bite closed and all but crushing Luna in his arms as he kissed her.  Bazie stomped on his jealousy and was about to clear his throat when Larry let go on his own and briefly buried his face in Luna’s throat.

“Vittu, that’s nothing like normal feeding.”

Bazie couldn’t stop his snicker.

“No, no it’s not.”

Then Larry blindsided him completely.

“You’re a Hunter group too.”  Not a question.

“What…”

Larry looked up the little bit to stare into Bazie’s eyes.

“Negative is too, because of how I was made.” He looked back over his shoulder at where Hata and Jay were watching, to the casual observer they didn’t look to be watching closely, but Bazie knew they were.  “If you need us, and we’re handy, yell.”

Bazie boggled then felt his face lighting up in a smile.

“Just, do me a favor,” asked Larry

“Ah?”

“Don’t let Jonne hear you call Luna a bitch.”


	4. Summoner and Slayer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Bizzare's collect themselves a Summoner, rather by accident.

 

Kiro closed his eyes and focused on the summoning chant.  He was safely curled in a hexagram and had his supplies handy.  He just had to trap the demon in the pentacle and he could send the blasted thing back home.

A little tug and Kiro smiled and shifted the chant to a more intense one.  Not long now.

~0~

Yu swore under his breath.  He could feel the threads of a summoning tugging at the demon he was chasing.  Whoever was calling the damn thing had better have a damn good explanation for why they had let the damn thing run amok in a crowded city.

No matter what someone was getting an ass kicking.

Yu snarled as the blasted thing manifested long enough to look around.  Low-level, which was good, Romeo and Luminor were still recovering from the last high level nasty they had to deal with.  The bad news was it was also stupid, and punched through the masonry wall of an abandoned warehouse before it remembered it could transubstantiate through things.

Yu grumbled and ran across the rooftops following the faint tugging of the summoning.  Whoever had it now had it good and if he could follow it back he could fix the problem.

If that meant a permanent solution by the death of the summoner, well that was just to damn bad.  Yu tightened his grip on his sword and sped up.

~0~

Kiro shifted up to his knees as he felt the demon coming closer.  Soon he could open his eyes and see his target.

The dust and debris from a collapsing wall had his blue green eyes popping open in shock.  He hadn’t expected to get a low level menial Imp.  More importantly he hadn’t expected it to be material and coming to him **physically**.  Kiro was on his feet and focusing on his containment chants when the Imp backhanded him.

The debris and dust had broken his protections, even with the charms he used to help keep that from happening. Now he was on the run fighting an opponent who was much bigger and stronger than he was.  Fortunately he still had his bag and his atheme and the Imp was slower than he was.  If he could get it contained he could still banish it.

~0~

Yu swore savagely when he saw the head of blond and black hair.  A second more careful look told him it wasn’t Strify.  The enchanter was still safely back at the hotel, more than likely curled up around his lover.  Luminor was probably spending more energy on calming his fretful love than he was on resting.  That meant this was some poser boy paying at demon summoning.

Fucking idiot didn’t even have containments points set up.  Any normal who read or watched popular fiction knew about containment points and protective circles.

Yu watched for a moment, planning his attack and found himself revising his opinion.  There were the remains of a protective hexagram on the floor, and it had some high level anti tampering charms laid on it before the wall had come down on top of it.  The feel of the power tugged at his mind, it was vaguely familiar.

Yu turned his attention back to the little person with bi-colored hair. They were fast, he’d give them that.  And it looked like they’d come marginally prepared.  Some of the potions and powders they were tossing on and around the Imp were high end stuff.  More critically they were laying a pattern on the floor.

Yu ducked a bit of thrown wreckage and went back to studying the pattern.  It was familiar, naggingly so.  Then his eyes widened, this was Dr. Cullen’s work, the new containments that had Luminor so thrilled and Strify so relieved.

Well hell, that meant he should probably rescue the poor sap before he got mashed to paste.  He wasn’t Shin; he couldn’t ask questions of dead people.  And after the last medium mess he wasn’t about to risk Romeo’s wrath just to drag Shin out here and satisfy his curiosity.

The small person had almost gotten his containment frame set up, it was a bit sloppy but would likely still work if they could get a breath to charge it.  Yu shifted and just when the Imp reared back and squalled after getting a face full of something powdery and violet he moved.  One hard fast thrust right through the spine.

The Imp shrieked and tried to turn to face this new more dangerous threat but Yu was ready.  A quick yank and a practiced leap and he was clear and circling for his next strike.  He was vaguely aware of the other person mixing two vials together and flinging it over the Imp as he lined up to try for a head strike.

The Imp shrieking and trying to clear its eyes, nose and mouth of the harmless looking grey dust foxed his aim.  He clipped the thing over the head rather than taking its head off like he’d planned.  The got him a thoroughly unpleasant slap to the side that sent him flying.

Yu rolled back to his feet and swore at yet another shirt being rent to ribbons and was ready again.  Whatever that last powder was it had worked, the Imp wasn’t chasing the other person anymore even thought it was flailing and reaching for them while letting out the most annoying set of groans and wails.

This time when he moved he didn’t miss.

Unfortunately the other person was in the middle of a banishment chant and the interaction of a demon slaying blade and that field was never pleasant.

It did kill the demon though, and send what was left back to whichever plane it had come from.

Yu rested for a moment, one knee down on the floor and his sword balanced over his shoulders as he glared at the little menace of a Summoner.  Now he had the luxury of time and could see the ambiguous figure was in fact male. A very pretty, very familiar male.  Yu’s eyes widened.

“ **Kiro**?”

Kiro’s head came up and around in surprise as Yu rose to his feet.

“Yu?  What are you doing here?”

Yu spun his sword in his hand and slammed the point down into the wood floor and left it there waggling a bit from the force of the impact.

“Aside from saving your ass from a demon?  You’re supposed to be safe in school!”  Yu stalked up to the shorter man and reached for his shoulder.

Kiro’s eyes flashed and his chin came up as he dodged away from the reaching hand.

“I was in the middle of banishing that demon. I didn’t need saving.”

Yu snorted and grabbed Kiro’s shoulder again, this time getting a solid grip on the smaller man.

“You were about to get mashed to paste.” Yu cupped his other hand behind Kiro’s skull before the shorter man had the chance to spit out his denials. A quick jerk and he had Kiro pressed tightly to his chest and was kissing him to silence his protests.

Initially Kiro struggled, but then began kissing back, fisting his hands tightly into the remains of Yu’s shirt.  All the adrenaline from the fight found somewhere new to go and Yu groaned into Kiro’s mouth as he bore them both to the floor.  God _no_ _wonder_ Strify was such a little Minx after a fight, having another warm willing body under his was making him crazy.

Yu’s fingers were rough and a bit clumsy as he shoved Kiro’s shirt up so he could attack those tight nipples.  Kiro’s hands yanked hard at Yu’s shirt even as his body arched up into Yu’s mouth.  It was clumsy, getting out of their clothing, neither having the patience to slow down.  In the end Kiro’s jeans were around his knees and Yu’s trousers were barely off his hips as Yu prepped Kiro using a bit of the blessed oil he used to anchor his protections circles with.  Not it’s _intended_ use, but it was all they had and desperately horny or not Yu wasn’t going to hurt Kiro.

Kiro squeaked as Yu all but folded him in half with both knees over one shoulder to line up and push in.  No finesse, just a single slow hard push that had Kiro panting and arching up.  Yu held still for a single long moment but then Kiro groped for his hip and shoulder.  After that it was pure brutal need, the sweet tightness of Kiro’s ass around Yu’s cock, the hot needy cries in his ear.  Kiro thrashed under Yu and begged; more, harder, there, right there.  It made Yu crazy; he buried his face in Kiro’s throat and nipped harder and harder, finally biting hard enough to break skin as Kiro screamed out his release.

Yu slammed in again, once, twice and once more before everything whited out in pleasure.

He came back to himself still shaking in reaction, but now more aware that they were on a filthy wooden floor.  Aware he ached from the fight, his knees stung and he felt sticky from sweat, blood and come.  But he had Kiro trembling in his arms and he still had questions.

“Why are you here?”

Kiro let out a little bark of laughter.

“I work here.  My research library is here, and unfortunately so are a lot of minor demons that need to get sent home.”

“Wait.”  Yu sat up and gave Kiro a confused look.  “You’re not still in school?”

The look Kiro gave him would have had Yu tackling for a good tickle back in primary school.

“No, haven’t been a formal student in a while.”

“So, you got your degree?”  Yu carefully untangled them and grimaced when he realized Kiro’s shirt was just as much a disaster as his was.

“Doctorate,” Kiro agreed mildly as he carefully wriggled his jeans back up and gathered his few unused powders, oils and potions up to pack back into his bag with his atheme.

“Wait. You’re Dr. Cullen?”

Kiro started giggling at the dumfounded look on Yu’s face, but nodded yes.

“Oh fuck.”  Yu gave up on fighting with his trousers and just flopped back onto the dirty floor. “We’re **here** because of you.”

Kiro looked startled.

“Me?  Why?”

“Your research.  The containments.  Luminor wanted to learn what you’d done and see if he could duplicate it.”

“Lumi’s here?”

“Kiro, everyone’s here, Lumi, Rom, Strify, Shin, we’re all here.”  Kiro blinked as that sank in.  Yu rose and yanked his trousers up and fastened them properly again then he offered Kiro a hand.

Kiro smiled at him and took it.

 


	5. The Terror of  Wedding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jinxx is freaking out, but Sandra thinks she knows whats going on.
> 
> Now to just drag the boys around to her point of view.

Sandra chewed her lip and watched Jinxx pace in ever more frantic circles.  She'd never seen her lycan friend panicked before, and given his rising hysteria she wasn't enjoying it right now and never, _ever_ wanted to see it again.  She rather liked the normal unflappable Jinxx, especially compared to the wreck her friend was right now.

She'd known lycan had a different set of social norms.  Hell, she'd about decked Jinxx the first time he'd called her a 'fine bitch' in admiring tones.

Calling a female a bitch was something of a compliment in lycan packs, it meant the female in question was worth fighting over to partner, not at all the same connotations as the human version of the term.

She knew that given his bloodlines he'd probably face an arranged marriage at some point, his father and grandfather were well known and respected Mystics, the lycan version of a Shaman.  What she, and clearly he, hadn't expected was for the call to come before Jinxx turned thirty.  He'd only mentioned there were negotiations starting a few months ago.  These things apparently usually took years to settle.

Jinxx had been enjoying a more human version of dating.  Yes, he listed very hard toward lycan girls as they could take his version of bed play a bit better.  Most human girls found lycan sex a bit on the rough and tumble side, and that was with the male in question staying in his human shape.

The girls who liked the other Sandra found a bit bent, and after a very brief period of experimentation Jinxx seemed to agree with her.  The boys were alternately fascinated and horrified, something she took great amusement in.  Andy in particular made the best horrified faces.

But Jinxx was freaking out.

He'd gotten the call this morning to report to the ceremonial circle at his home pack's enclave in the morning.  Given his age and that he was only just showing the powers of a Mystic there were only a very few reasons he could be called like that, and he wasn't being called as a witness.  He was being called as a participant.

Jake had blinked and asked why that was a big deal and Jinxx had promptly started having hysterics.

Andy had shot her a lost look and Ash for once had been on the ball and asked if this had to do with a wedding.

Jinxx had ratcheted up the hissy fit.

Sandra knew why.

His current girlfriend Sammi.  Jinxx was terribly cute when she was around.  The pair of them were so stupid sappy in love it made her teeth hurt.  Not that she wanted it to stop exactly; she was just more than a touch envious.

And Jinxx was convinced he was going to be made to marry a complete stranger.  It wasn't all that uncommon for lycan to mate with a complete stranger for the good of the bloodlines. The very idea made Sandra twitch, but it worked, and had worked for hundreds upon hundreds of years.  Usually after the wedding the pair developed at least a strong mutual respect and affection if not real deep love.

Ash's eyes going round made her tune back into Jinxx's panicked babble.

Well, fuck.  The furry fuckhead was trying to talk himself into grabbing Sammi and running like hell.

She was so focused on trying to help Andy talk Jinxx out of that idea, and listening to Andy was making her want to laugh, poor clueless idiot, that she jumped when her phone buzzed.

All the boys looked at her when she squeaked, even Jinxx.

She took a breath and pulled the infernal device out of her pocket and looked at it.

A text from Sammi.

That was odd.

@Can't call Jinxxie, get him to Cerm Cir tomorrow PROMISE ME!  Need him there.  Getting married.@

Sandra blinked and reread the words.

They didn't change.

“Oh god.  She's getting the grin.”

She grinned wider at the faint whimper out of Ash after Andy's worried words.

“You're going tomorrow.”

A chorus of four shocked male voices echoed in her ears.

Sandra reached out and grabbed Jinxx by the hair at the nape of his neck and tugged.  She couldn't really scruff him in his human shape, but this still made Jinxx go a bit limp under her hand.

“You're going.  Sammi wants you there.”

If she hadn't had a strong suspicion as to what was going on the look of utter heartbreak on Jinxx's face would have made her want to cry, as it was she thought she knew what was going to happen.

If she was wrong she'd pay for the rest of her life for hurting Jinxx.

But if she was right... well that would be worth it.

~0~

Jinxx was miserable.

If Sandra hadn't known what to dress him in we'd have all forgotten and put him in the PVC crap Jake had gotten as a bad joke.

Leather pants, leather boots with the leather soles and a cotton t-shirt.  Stuff he could change in and not leave in shredded bits all over the place.  Sandra had washed his face almost by force, so he didn't even have eyeliner on when we forced him into the van.

Getting him back out was a whole other challenge.

The older lycan seemed to find it amusing, at least until they realized we were going with him into the circle.

Then they tried to stop us.

Sandra snarked but Andy got _mad_.  Mad enough he got right in the face of the biggest guy trying to stop us and snarled at him that by the gods we were going in to stand with our brother and they could damn well get the fuck out of the way.

A pissed off Prophet isn't something that's fun to have in your face, not when he's pulling all his powers online and shoving them up your nose.

The poor big lunk hesitated and looked over his shoulder at someone else.

I've stood down a lycan twice my size, but I have vampire blood and speed to back it up.  Andy is pretty much human, empowered, but still fundamentally human.

Jinxx's grandfather laughs and tells the guards to let us through and Jinxx is giving Andy a look that is the most freaky mix of gratitude and betrayal I have ever seen in my life.

Lycan packs act in a lot of ways the same as native American Indian tribes like mine do, there's even a bit of crossbreeding there.  The circle is really just a circle of bare dirt in the middle of the enclave, nothing fancy.  Today you can't see anything for all the people crowded around the perimeter.

Jinxx ends up standing more or less in the middle looking miserable and scared as a bunch of chanting and talking I can't understand goes on.  Jake looks nervous, Andy still looks mad and Sandra looks like she's waiting for something.  I wish I could see her eyes, but she's got them hidden behind those blasted sunglasses again.

The crowd around the circle parts and a girl in a deerskin tunic steps through.

I feel like kicking myself.

Jinxx turns to face her and his face just lights up.  He's running over and dropping to his knees in front of her to pick up her hands to kiss each one on the palm.

~0~

The chanting stops and I can hear the crowd move.  I don't want to but I turn to see why.

Sammi, my Sammi steps through.  She's dressed in the elk skin tunic she made from the hide I gave her last fall.  I tanned that hide from my own kill with my own hands and gave it to her and she made a traditional tunic from it.

And she's wearing it, wearing it here.

My arranged wife is my Sammi.

I stagger over to her and drop to my knees, my legs won't hold me up I'm shaking so bad.  I catch her hands in mine and press fervent kisses to the palms, left hand then right and then fling my arms around her and bury by face in her stomach. I can feel her hands in my hair and how she's curled over me.

Then she's sliding down to kneel in front of me and I'm kissing her until I'm dizzy.

My Sammi, my beautiful angel.

I'm nuzzling at the side of her neck and she bares her throat to me so I can bite.

I can just taste her blood when I feel her biting me.

Things go a bit fuzzy from there.

I don't care though.

I have my Sammi in my arms and no one will ever take her away from me.

~0~

Andy flushes a bit when Jinxx tumbles Sammi into the dirt, but the crowd seems very pleased.  Jake gaped a bit and is now trying to find anywhere to look but at where his fellow guitar player is fucking his new wife.  Ash's ears are red, but he's giving the proceedings a fair bit of his attention.

I'm trying not to laugh my ass off.

They should have done the research like I did when Jinxx mentioned that negotiations had started six months ago.  Even if he didn't think anything would happen for years.

Boys are so clueless.

Now if Ash and Andy will only buy a clue.


	6. Origins : CC

Jake grinned crookedly at Jinxx and Ash.

Andy had been sucked into an interview so that left them to help CC get settled into the apartment near their hunter teams’ home base.

They’d wait and see how CC worked before pulling him all the way into the team.

They missed Sandra, but after that last round of curses she really needed to get out of the business if she wanted any chance of any kind of life.

The last fight had almost killed her.  It had killed any chance of her having a kid of her own.  Something that her family, in spite of _them_ all being in the business, was profoundly unhappy about.

She was insistent that if they needed help they call her, but they’d already decided that they’d use her for what she excelled at.

Research.

She had an uncanny knack for sorting through pages and piles of dreck and pulling out the useful bits they needed most.

Just no more front-line shit, not if they could help it.  None of them could stomach the idea of losing their sister.  Almost losing her had been horrible enough for one lifetime.

CC laughed up at them from where he stood beside his battered little second hand pickup with all he owned in boxes in the bed and cab.

Jinxx laughed back and vaulted the railing to land lightly beside their friend.

“Ready?”

“Been ready man.”

Jake grinned back at Ash and they raced down the steps to help unload.

~0~

“Dude, you like need furniture and shit.”

Ash blinked and looked around the little living room now that all the boxes were put away.  He had to agree with Jake’s slightly drunk comment.

They were flopped out on the floor, avoiding the corner that held CC’s drums.  There was a nice abundance of cushions but now that Ash was really looking; they all looked to be rescued from old couches. The biggest thing they’d moved in after CC’s drums was a futon mattress.

A glance at CC and he saw nerves, nerves and shame.  Okay then, this was more than a ran away to the big city and don’t have much thing.

He held up his beer and grinned as if he was as drunk as Jake.

“Ah, we’ll just wait and hit up the dumpsters behind the dorms at the U.”

CC blinked at him, but Jinxx knew what he was talking about and cracked up before raising his beer in a mock toast.

“Good plan, some of those stupid kids chuck perfectly good stuff ‘cause they’re too lazy to move it.”  He grinned at CC and got a tentative smile back. “Seriously man, we’ll find you a couch and maybe even a TV and some dishes.”

CC groaned and his ears went red.

Jake had ribbed him when he learned CC had a battered coffee maker, one mug, two bowls and a mismatched handful of spoons to his name as far as kitchen gear was concerned.

More than a touch odd given how well CC cooked and how often he’d taken over a kitchen at one of their apartments.  And given how Jake adored anything CC cooked, well, Ash shared a look with Jinxx and cocked an eyebrow in silent question.  The teams’ only lycan had a far better sense of smell than he did.

Jinxx caught his eye and gave the odd side to side waggle that meant maybe.

Ash grinned as if they’d shared a joke and settled back in to welcoming their drummer home.

He and Jinxx would talk later; he had a nagging suspicion about the behaviors from their Mourner.

~0~

“Okay, spill.” Ash handed over Jinxx’s caramel latté with a stupid amount of whipped cream and sprinkles and dumped sugar into his own black coffee.

“I don’t think he’s quite human.”

“Coming from us that is hardly an indictment Jinxx.”

The lycan grinned and took a long sip of his drink.

“True, oh fangy one.  Seriously.  You’ve seen how hard Jake fixated on him.”

“Mmm” agreed Ash, but he wanted to know Jinxx feelings before he mentioned his own suspicions.

“I know Mourners don’t always fixate on Destroyers, but…”  Jinxx’s voice trailed off and he shrugged.

Ash’s head came up ad his eyes narrowed.

“They do to an alarming degree, your point?”

“You’ve seen how careful he is about who’s around him, and how he drinks.”

Ash winced.  A surefire way to shut down a Destroyers powers was to get them drunk or to drug them half stupid.

CC drank like a fish.  He didn’t do drugs, but realistically beer was a safer method of self medication.

“Shit.” Ash raked his hands through his hair.  He _liked_ CC, liked his warped sense of humor and how he’d be the first to laugh at himself.

He so didn’t want to have to kill a friend.

~0~

Jake grinned and hopped out of the passenger seat of CC’s little pickup and trotted to the back to help unload their latest set of finds.

Jinxx had gotten the bright idea to borrow a plain moving truck and do a sweep last night.  With all the guys working together they’d snapped up a loveseat, part of a sectional sofa, two recliners, a trio of mattresses that didn’t look to even have been used, and a stupid number of other smaller items.

Jinxx had laid claim to one of the recliners, and Sammi had rolled her eyes when she saw the pile of throws, blankets and other bedding they’d brought back.  Then she’d made Jinxx help her gather it all up and had headed to the closest Laundromat after all but holding Jake up for money for feed the machines.

Jake hadn’t complained, not when it meant he and CC had warm and clean linens on a new bed to tentatively explore each other’s bodies on.

He liked the feel of the other man’s lean body beside his, liked how CC squeaked when tickled, how he moaned when petted and how incredibly good he tasted when kissed.

He blinked when Andy popped up and peered into the bed of the truck.

“What is it with you and Sherpa throws?”

“They’re warm and fuzzy?”

Andy rolled his eyes and helped by taking an armload of scavenged fuzzy blankets and clothing.

“Sammi is gonna grouse at you about nesting Jake.”

Jake flipped off the taller man before scooping up an armful of his own.  He’d found a bunch of pillows that hadn’t even had the plastic film around them taken off yet and a memory foam mattress pad that was still in the box.

Jinxx looked down as Andy walked up.

“Nesting?”

“Nesting.”

“I’ll warn Sammi.”

“Pussies,” Jake called up.

Jinxx didn’t even bother flipping him off.

~0~

Ash had made sure to bring crullers, jam filled donuts and coffee when he came to answer Sandra’s call that she had something for him.  She’d sounded a bit grim, and he knew from experience that meant she’d either found bad stuff or she was having monthly cramps.  Not being able to have a kid hadn’t stopped her still suffering through the feminine monthlies.  He just hoped it wasn’t both; he really didn’t want to have to blow a favor just to get her the dark chocolate truffles she liked so much.  If he had to he would though, he loved her as dearly as if she was his blood sister.

The door was open so he rapped on it before nudging it open.  It wasn’t as big a security failing as it seemed, Ash still shivered a little as he felt the wards tingle on his skin as he passed through the door. Her birth brothers were both studying to be Wardsmiths, and were indulging in a bit of fraternal over protectiveness. 

Not that Ash was complaining.  Sandra was worth the best wards money, blood and blackmail could buy.

“I come bearing gifts?”

“Better have, I hate talking to families with their heads up their asses.”

Ash winced and offered the double chocolate macchiato and was relieved when Sandra just waved him at a chair before flopping down into her battered old couch.

The thing was still fugly, but he’d spent too many nights on it being watched over after injury to ever say she should get rid of the thing.  Fugly or not it was damn comfy.  When they'd found it's twin in blue in a thrift store they'd pounced on it for in the basement of the Tower.

“Good news and bad news,” she started which made Ash grin.  She always said that.

“Bad news.”

“You always say that.”

“Hey, get it out and dealt with.”

“True.” Sandra settled down with a raspberry filled donut in hand.  “The man we know as Christian Mora is dead according to his own mother.”

Ash was glad he hadn’t been taking a sip of his coffee; he’d have spat it everywhere.

“Excuse me?”

Sandra leveled a sober look at him and repeated herself in a way that left no room for misunderstanding.

“His family claims he’s dead Ash.”

Ash blinked and shivered, but Sandra wasn’t done.

“From what I can find, and the Feds say our CC is alive and well thank you very fucking much,  but according to his mother he was declared dead about four years ago.  I'm inclined to believe the Feds, even if _they_ are getting better about collecting taxes off the dead.”

That was too much of a coincidence.

“About when he moved here.”

“Yep.  Even better, when I went digging I found there’s been at least one male in the family every generation there’s record for that the family says is dead who either isn’t or didn’t die when they said and how they say they did.”

“What’s the differences?”  Ash braced himself.

Sandra gave him a tight smile.

“The ones that are dead were all put down by various agencies as Destroyers.”

“Shit.  How many are still alive?”

“Two.”

Ash groaned and thumped his head off the back of the chair.

“CC and who?”

“A cousin who is apparently flagrantly gay.”

Ash let out a snort.

“Okay, that’s random.”

“Hispanic and Catholic, gay are about as close to the devil as you can get for some of them.  Add in that he's a fashion designer, the macho just couldn't cope. ” Sandra shrugged, but Ash knew her opinion on people who didn’t stand by family no matter what.

She might not have defended her younger brother, but she damn well stood by him.  She even held him down so Ash could make the final blow as quick as possible.  He’d even helped the sister of his heart scatter the ashes left when they’d exposed his remains to sunlight.

Sandra had been the one to shout Andy down when he’d learned about Ash being a hereditary vampire and force fed the whole team the information about the differences between the common vampire, like her brother had been, High and Royal line vampires and the rarer hereditary sorts.  It had been one _hell_ of an argument.

“So,” he stared blindly up at the ceiling. “CC is either a Destroyer, or gay.”

“Given how Jake is acting I think you can drop the 'or' in there.”

Ash smiled and looked back at where Sandra was demolishing a second pastry.

“Gay and a Destroyer?”

“When was the last time you saw a Mourner nesting as bad as Jake is?”

Ash winced.

She had a point.

He just wished the powers didn’t use it to kill the Destroyers.

~0~

They’d had a good show, the fans had been welcoming of CC and he’d had a few fluttering up at him after the show was over.

Jake was just wishing now that he’s listened to Ash and they’d stayed with the group.

Ghouls.

He hated fucking Ghouls.

This was not how he’d planned on letting CC know about their other job, the one they needed the band as cover for.

Fuck.  Fuck fuck fuckity fuck.

Fuck a duck even.

Oh, this was so not good.

At least he still had his gun.

Ten Ghouls, eight shots, two speed loaders in the hidden pocket of his jacket.

Shoot eight kick the other two's teeth in.  He wasn’t counting on being able to reload.

He could do this.

Jake shoved a frozen CC behind him and pulled the pistol from its hiding place at the small of his back and carefully opened fire.

Three went down in short order.  But the rest tried to swarm, and Jake only got two more before they were on them.

CC screamed, and Jake wished he could stop and comfort the drummer, but he was rather busy trying to keep them both alive.

Simple intimidation worked for a little while.  The Ghouls didn’t like the blessing worked into the lining of his leather jacket. But as he was backing them up his boot slipped.

Jake swore as he felt himself start to go down.

He heard CC scream again them the world went white and exploded.

~0~

Jinxx suddenly stopped laughing and snapped his head up.

“Baby?”  Sammi stroked a hand over her husband’s shoulder, trying to get his attention again.

“Shit.  Trouble.”

“Jake and CC.” Her eyes went sharp and left Andy with a funny feeling in his gut.  Jinxx had been coming into his heritage as a Mystic, and every now and again he’d just get funny feelings out of nowhere.  Feeling Sammi seemed to understand.  But they had been formally married only a few months ago, and a properly bonded couple tended to have a creepy almost twins like awareness of their partner.

“I’ll get the van.”

“Baby…”

“I won’t go in, not until it’s clear.” Her hand rested on her abdomen is a way that sent chills down Andy’s spine.  “But I _will not_ let you go alone.”

Jinxx looked torn, but whatever was happening had him stressed enough to accept with a rough kiss.

“Following you man,” said Ash somberly.

Jinxx nodded and a moment later and they were running after a dark furred wolf.

Andy was relieved when they didn’t have to go far, a few blocks at most, before they felt the backwash of power from something.

Jinx yelped and put on a burst of speed that left Andy in the dust.  Ash just swore and took off using the speed of his vampire nature.

Some day’s Andy just hated being human.  He knew they'd never leave him in danger, but it irked the crap out of him that they'd haul ass to get between it and him.

But then he caught up and gulped.

A dozen fallen bodies, the rotten stink of Ghoul and a human shaped Jinxx glowing blue as he did _something_ to the scene.  Not a good mix.

Then he heard the broken croon Jake made when he was trying to soothe any of them when sick or injured and the low sob of another man.

Smooth as his speaking voice was his singing voice _sucked_.

CC was curled in a tight ball and it sounded like he was crying his eyes out.  Jake was half curled around him crooning and petting with worried hands.

“Crap.  So much for him just being gay.”

Andy glared at Ash just as Jake shot the vampire a black look.

Jinxx was busy and CC didn’t look to be wanting to move any time soon.

Poor kid.

But back to Ash.

“Ashley.”

“Yeah?”

“Do we have to have the conversation about withholding information again?”

“Uhm... but you didn’t want to know what color her panties were.”

Andy growled and cranked up the glare.

“Ashley.”

Ash sighed and his shoulders slumped.

“Not here.  I’ll tell you everything, but it’s got to be the whole team. Including CC.”

Andy frowned.  CC wasn’t part of the team, and right now was looking like a severely traumatized normal.

“Trust me Andy, he needs to be there.”

“We need to leave.  Now.”

Andy twitched, but Jinxx looked like he was about to pass out.

Ash moved to help Jake get CC upright just as Andy heard the familiar engine noise of Jinxx’s van.  Sammi didn’t come down the alley, just pulled up and slid the side door open for them to climb in.

Jake refused to let Ash do more than carry his gun.  He limped to the van cradling CC in his arms.

Sammi passed back one of the fuzzy throw blankets Jake had scavenged to wrap around the trembling drummer.

Then, and Andy blessed her good sense, she drove them toward the Tower without asking any questions.

~0~

“Why didn’t you tell us she was pregnant?” Ash hissed at Jinxx as he half carried the lycan inside.

“We only just got a positive test.  We hadn’t told the Elders yet,” Sammi responded a touch tartly.

Jinxx dragged up a goofy smile as he was settled into a battered twin of Sandra’s couch.

“Twins,” he grinned loopily and settled down when Sammi curled up beside him and started petting his hair.

“Joy, we get little Jinxx monsters… Ash, you had something to share with the class?”  Andy’s tone was rather pointed at the end.

Ash winced, flopped into a chair and stared right at where Jake had curled around CC in the other big chair.

No point in beating around the bush then.

“CC’s a Destroyer.”

Everyone froze at the sharp click of a gun cocking.

There was a long heavy silence as everyone processed that CC had whimpered and huddled tighter into Jake and that Jake had his backup pistol cocked and aimed right at Ashley’s head.

The steadiness of his hand and the coldness of his stare had Sammi huddling into Jinxx’s side.

“Jake…”

“You aren’t touching him.” The tone was pure ice.

Ash sighed and tried again.

“Jake, quit being a fuck-wit.  I am not going to hurt a hair on CC’s head.  Sandra found out for me about a week ago.”

He let Jake process that.  And add in the little fact that Ash had been the one who’d brought food and coffee for everyone on over a dozen different times over that past week.  If he’d wanted CC dead he could easily have poisoned his coffee.

Jake un-cocked the gun and set it down in easy reach and went back to petting CC's hair.

Andy sat down with a thump.

“Okay.  When the fuck were you going to tell the rest of us Ash?”

“I, well, shit.” Ash raked his hair out of his face.  “How the fuck was I supposed to?  Oh hey our new drummer is number one on the kill on sight list for paranormal defense folks like us? It’s **_CC_** for Christ’s sake!  One of the gentlest people I know!”

Andy closed his eyes, and then nodded when Ash ran out of word for a moment.

“Okay.”

“Andy, people try and kill me all the time because I was _born_ a vampire, I can’t, I **_won’t_** try killing one of my friends for how he was born, not when he’s never hurt anyone with his so called ‘apocalyptic’ powers.  I _can’t_.”

Andy winced at Ash’s reminder of his own heritage.

“Jinxx, what did you find in the alley?”

Jinxx looked at him sadly, but seemed less disconnected.  Seeing a man you called brother pointing a gun at another man you love like family tended to sober a person up pretty fast.

“A dozen Ghouls, several with bullet holes from Jake’s nine mil, all dead from a power blast from a Destroyer.”

Andy’s blue eyes sharpened.

“So Cese didn’t do anything until after Jake had started shooting.”

Jinxx shook his head no.

Jake rubbed his cheek over CC’s hair, but then looked up with sad hazel eyes.

“He didn’t lose it until I fell.  The world kind of went inside out after that.”

Ash winced.

“You blew your knee again.”

Jake shook his head.

“Just twisted my ankle, not too bad.”

Ash levered himself up out of his chair.

“Andy, get his boot off, I’ll get the peas.”

“Peas,” came the faint question from where CC had his face buried in Jake’s shoulder.

Andy snorted as he got up to approach Jake, after a long stare down Jake let him peel his boot off his injured ankle.

“Ice pack, frozen peas are great.  Hang on, reclining the monster.”

CC squeaked and Jake grunted, but he helped Andy tip the big chair back into its reclining position.  Getting it back out could get fun, but they’d nursed injured team members in the damn thing before.

Andy felt his heart break a little when CC peeked up at him with wide and frightened brown eyes.

“You, you aren’t gonna throw me out?”

Jake cuddled him tight and whispered to him, but Andy felt compelled to answer.

“No, you’re one of us.”

“We stick by our brothers,” agreed Ash as he came back in with a bag of frozen peas.  “I got coffee going, but in a little I need to go out and get food.  Our larder down here is a bit bare.”

CC’s eyes trailed over to where Jinxx and Sammi were curled up together.

Sammi spoke for both of them.

“You’re pack, deal with it.”

They all politely ignored it when his trembling settled into quiet crying into Jake’s shoulder.

But the relief in Jakes eyes spoke far louder than words.

 


	7. Terror Twins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ash takes the twins so Jinxx and Sammi can have a night off.
> 
> He has no idea what he's in for.

Jinxx had been grateful when Ash had volunteered to take the twins for a night so he and Sammi could enjoy their anniversary.  Shocked and unsure, but profoundly grateful.  Since the twins had been born the only nights he had with his wife were the few when her mother wanted to spoil her grandchildren and those were a bit of a mixed blessing.

Ash had insisted that he'd be fine with the two cubs and had even provided a basket of 'goodies' for his friend to enjoy with his wife.

Now Ash was wondering just what in the nine hells he'd been thinking as two not quite three year old terrors looked up at him with the same opal blue eyes their father had.

That they were sitting playing in at least two inches of water wouldn't have been an issue, but it was flooding up out of the toilet bowl at a rate that was frankly alarming.

At least it was clean water.  He'd heard his sister's horror story about his nephew's rubber ducky and the toilet and had gone to scrub his skin raw in the shower in reaction. The twins had apparently decided his Outlaw ducky needed to go for a swim.

At least he knew how to shut the water off thanks to his sister.

Thank god the buildings maintenance guy had a sense of humor, and had been able to get the blasted rubber duck the two had tried to flush with damaging duck or toilet.  He’d even helped by shop-vacing up the worst of the water.

Ash still had ended up without a clean dry towel in the place.

He'd already had the fight about dinner, and lost spectacularly.  Steamed veggies and chicken tenders had been replaced by grilled cheese sandwiches and chicken noodle soup.

The twins had insisted on’ helping’ make the sandwiches, the fire department had been terribly amused to learn the gouts of black smoke pouring from his window had just been from a relatively small grease fire that Ash actually had under control.  Not that his neighbor would _ever_ believe that.  She'd had her daughter in law burn a kitchen to cinders before, so if she saw black smoke the fire department got called, not matter how little smoke she saw or smelled.

His Aunt had been trying and failing to control her snickers when he'd called her for help making chicken noodle soup, while he'd been busy on the phone the two little imps had taken crayons to one of his bass guitars.

If Sammi knew her babies had seen one of his raunchier guitars she'd **_kill_** him.  So there was no way in hell he was griping about his Purdy girls having brightly colored crayon flowers and things scrawled all over them.  He wasn't sure if he'd ever be able to take that bass out on stage ever again without blushing.

Bath time had ended with him getting wetter than the boys did, and probably cleaner, as he'd learned soapy three year olds are slick, and that these two in particular liked to squiggle in the bath.  Andy had seen him chasing one wet naked, squealing child down the hallway and turned right around to lock himself back in his apartment.

Bed time was all but impossible.

He'd no idea that even lycan children had to deal with the dreaded under the bed and closet monsters.

He'd tried stories, and learned he didn't do them right.  A frantic call to Sandra had gotten him a book of lycan fairy tales, and their former drummer laughing herself half sick when she learned why he needed them _right now_.

She'd delivered the books but refused to rescue him from his own folly, citing that he needed to learn in case he bred himself.

Ash was profoundly grateful that both boys were potty trained.  Changing diapers would have been a nightmare.

As it was he'd learned a pensive face and an 'uh oh' meant bad things.  Things that ended up with him dealing with a wet, soapy squirmy child again and hoping there were clean dry clothes to decant the child into.

Uh oh also meant that when they ‘helped’ with dishes that his kitchen floor got really clean from all the gouts of bubbles that erupted out of the poor dishwasher.  The older menace had filled both cups with liquid dish soap, not the powder that he normally used.

And he found himself without a clean dry towel again.

He'd learned that mothers who took their children to the Laundromat with them were insane.  But had found himself relieved that some did take their little ones as they helped him keep the twins somewhat corralled.

He'd also gotten a few phone numbers from single girls who hadn't given him the time of day before.  Apparently there was something about a man and babies, even if the little hellions weren't his.

Story time take two worked a bit better, but to finally get them settled he'd resorted to play for them on his acoustic.

~0~

Sammi peeked in and had to slap a hand over her mouth.  Jinxx felt her amusement and hustled up to peer over her shoulder.

He grinned and rummaged out his phone to take a couple pictures.

He wasn't sure who they were going to embarrass worse, his boys when they were older or Ash now.

But he couldn't resist the impulse to photograph Ash flopped over dead asleep on the couch with Ian and Mark snuggled up close, each under one protective arm.

He looked back at Andy and whispered.

“Were they any trouble?”

Andy just grinned and shook his head.

“Nah, no trouble at all.”


	8. Nephilium

Andy looked up and leveled a glare at Jake and CC.  Jake just shrugged at him and CC fidgeted trying to half hide his lean body behind Jake's shorter, blocker one.

“Tell me you’re joking.”  The tone was dead flat.

“No can do boss.” Jake offered with a wry twist of lips.  Andy didn’t even bother to grimace at the old joke. He was the youngest, yes, he was the singer and formal ‘face’ for the band that was their cover but he was far from the ‘boss’.

“Fuck.”

“Jinxx is following him,” offered CC meekly.

Andy just sighed and rose.

“Where was our beloved fang faced pervert headed this time?”  He had three guesses already lined up in his head and was pretty sure he wouldn’t need more than the first one.

“Red light district.”

Andy grimaced; he’d got it in one again.  Even after a run in with a succubus Ash still had slut radar and used it extensively to feed.

“Did furball take his phone this time?”

CC gulped and offered the slim bit of electronics.

Andy rolled his head back and stared up at the ceiling for a moment, god was currently busy, so no luck there.

“Fuck,” he repeated and grabbed for his coat.  “Fine, let’s go find the fuckheads.”

At least Ash had waited until _after_ their planned shows were done to go AWOL.

~0~

Yu swore under his breath, he really hated dealing with vampire nests.  High line vamps he could deal with, Kiro had a couple he counted as good friends from his school days.  Something that still gave Yu collywobbles if he thought about it too hard, even if he knew neither had been converted when Kiro had met them.

It helped that said High lines were both bonded to mates and thus relatively safe to humans.

It didn’t help that the one was bonded to a chronic flirt and seemed to enjoy said mates attempts to catch him in a corner and molest him.

“Damnit Theon, _aaugh_!”  Yu slapped at the grabby hands and scowled blackly as the blond fluttered his eyelashes.  “Don’t you have a vampire to go rape?”

“Can’t rape the willing,” chirped the vampire, so Yu took the risk of shifting his glare off Theon and onto Vivian.

Vivian grinned in a rather wobbly fashion back at him from where he was hovering over the table with maps of the city spread over it, his eyes not lighting up at all.  Christian was frowning down at all the red marks and for once Lumi wasn’t having issues with having a lycan, who wasn't Rom, within an arm’s reach of his lover.

Then again it _was_ Christian, he and Jason had been displeased to see other lycan trying to make hamburger out of Strify and had stepped in to defend the enchanter.  Rom barreling in had put paid to the small pack of idiots doing anything but running away tails tucked between their legs.  Christian had also followed up and made sure the local packs were aware of the clutch of hooligans so they could be taken care of before they caused more trouble.

Rom was curled up out of the way on the couch, his arms wrapped around Shin as he tried to help the medium cope with all the unquiet dead trying to ‘borrow’ Shin to tell their tales of woe.  Being under wards helped, but there were so many right now they put far more pressure than normal on the poor medium.

Far too many unquiet dead for his peace of mind, and far too many with near identical stories; a kiss of common vampires with no regard for who they killed.  Not that many common vampires gave a damn given they were pretty stupid as a general rule.  The damn things were making whole areas around the red light district _very_ dangerous to go near.  That meant locals that could cleared out at sunset.  But those who had to work in the area to live were running a dangerous lottery, and outsiders were walking targets.

So far the kiss was only taking one or two victims a week.  Mostly the unfortunates were drunks, druggies or other homeless folk who had wandered in. But sooner or later they’d find a potential and drag them over.  Or they’d have a victim fight their way free after being bitten and they’d have another common vampire wandering around.  And the mess one could cause doing their final change over outside a hospital was horrific.

Hell, the mess they could make _in_ a hospital was horrific, but there at least there were people who could ensure the transformation never finished.  Not that being dead made the victims any happier, most had a fit after learning they were going to be killed and their bodies burned after their infection failed to respond to standard treatments.

Not that the fit _changed_ anything.  It just kept them distracted while the clinicians took them out.

The High lines weren’t happy about the kiss but the treaty they had with the humans meant that they couldn’t actually hunt down the pests and deal with them themselves, something Yu thought was asinine.  High and Royal line vampires were the best possible choices to take down a bunch of common ones.  And _they_ could do it with the only casualties being the vermin they were targeting.  Using humans tended to get messy.

Kiro was chewing his lip and pointed out a concern about increased demon activity in the area as well.  Demons were Kiro’s thing, capture, containment and banishment.  Yu just killed the damn things.

Julian suddenly sat up.

“We got an unknown entering the area.”

Theon abruptly dropped the flirt act and spun in place to face the slender black haired man.

“What and where?”

Julian’s blue eyes went unfocused as he traced mental fingers over his wards.

“Lycan, and he’s searching for something, very intent.  So he may be following someone.”

“Could someone else have gotten through your wards?”  Luminor’s question was soft and Yu couldn’t see why it warranted the bristling from Theon and Jason.  Even the very best Wardmaster would have had problems sectioning off as big an area as Julian had, and he was only half trained at best.

“Yes, I have fits tracking High lines and some types of zombie and ghoul.”

The usual problem then.  Wards could be set for the living or the dead.  Setting them for both at the same time was pure hell even for the very best Wardsmith.

Theon grumbled and Jason gave himself a hard shake.

“Sorry.”

Luminor managed a small smile.

“He’s pack, I’m not.”

Jason’s head came up and Yu blinked at the strange look behind his blue eyes.

“For this you are, after this you are.”

Yu rocked back on his heels.

Well, _that_ was unexpected.

Then Julian let out a shocked gasp and reeled in place.  Both Christian and Jason dropped what they were doing to bracket the slender man, each catching a hand to squeeze to give Julian an anchor point.  Shin let out a low cry of his own that had Romeo whispering worriedly to him and stroking his hair.  Even Kiro, Strify and Luminor stopped and looked up at the ceiling.  He just got a heavy crawling feeling of something powerful moving overhead.  Overhead; where Sammy and his bonded mate were keeping watch over one of the main roads into their contained area.

When the feeling passed Yu took a deep breath and asked.

“Okay.  What the **_fuck_** was that?”

Julian barely breathed the word.

“Nephilium.”

~0~

Sammy smiled as he watched his lover fly under his own power.  Black velvet wings dark against the stars and the bright haze over the city.  All to soon he knew this little bit of freedom would be over and Mikko would be back on the rooftop beside him, wrapped up in the mortal guise he’d worn for so long to keep him out of sight to demon hunters.

Ironic given that before Sammy’s conversion he’d _been_ a demon hunter.  And until he'd converted and bitten Mikko he'd never had any clue he was anything but human.

The dark shape folded his wings and plummeted, landing with impossible lightness on the roof, his wings flipped where the tips pointed to the sky in what Sammy knew was a defensive posture unique to a small number of his species, knees bent and right hand resting on the roof for balance.  Glowing blue eyes looked at him then the figure stood, the wings flipped and vanished leaving only a slender and slightly short blond man standing there raking his fine blond hair out of his eyes.

Sammy smiled and opened his arms for Mikko to step into.

They were just getting comfortable in each other’s embrace when the sound of footsteps made them break apart and turn.

Yu stepped out onto the rooftop, his sword held at a wary angle.

“It’s just us Yu.”

The demon slayer didn’t relax as he did a careful circuit of the roof.  Sammy smiled and settled back down to bury his nose in Mikko’s fine golden hair.  Mikko just sighed in resignation and rubbed his cheek over the soft cotton of Sammy’s shirt.

Yu circled back to them and with a practiced flip tucked his blade away.

“You two just scared the fuck out of Julian.”

Sammy blinked in surprise and Mikko let out a soft ‘uh?’ in confusion.

Yu raked his hair back from his face.

“Look, we aren’t blind, or stupid.  Whatever it is that follows you two around just scares the crap out of people.”

Sammy looked down and caught Mikko’s eyes. _~they’ll figure it out sooner or later.~_

Mikko sighed and shrugged.  _~would prefer later.  Don’t want to lose you yet.~_

Yu just huffed and turned back toward the stairs, whatever it was they weren’t talking, just like normal.  And Sammy’s mutter of ‘not losing me’ _still_ made _no_ sense.

“Julian felt a lycan cross the wards.”

“The renegades haven’t tried taking a lycan yet have they?”  Lycan generally didn’t taste good to vampires of any subset, but desperation didn’t make for choosy bloodsuckers.

Yu paused and looked back at the pair and considered Mikko’s question.

“Not yet, but they also haven’t killed in four days.”  He let them do the math, and felt reassured when he saw two grimaces and both men separating to follow.

He still wondered why Sammy let Mikko come last.  Vivian _always_ made sure Theon left the roof first to protect his mate from any potential threats from above.

~0~

Jinxx didn’t like the way this place smelled.  It had a deep seated reek of blood, piss and old death laid under newer death, not a good mix.  He’d lost Ash’s scent trail a ways back so had shifted back to human to take advantage of better color vision so he could scan for that damn leopard print scarf Ash liked so much.  He felt for the pouch he wore around his neck and swore when he felt that it was empty.

Andy was going to kill him for forgetting his phone again.

Worse he was getting the hair rising prickle on the back of his neck that meant trouble.

Then he heard a familiar noise, Ash’s chortle of laughter.  Not the one where he was amused, the one where he was hungry and _pissed_.  Someone was playing a game of taunt the vampire, which _never_ ended well.

He swore again and bolted toward the sound.

He found Ash, backed into the end of an alley by two kids who didn’t smell right.

When one turned to half face him he knew why they smelled off and grimaced.  He hated dealing with ghouls. Then he registered what they had in their hands.  Just regular old baseball bats would have been okay.  Not these, he could see a faint greenish haze around them with his othersight.

Whitethorn.

The one material that Ash really couldn’t cope with as a vampire.  No wonder he hadn’t just worked his oogy boggy thing on them and left them.  Ash’s best trick required him to at least have skin contact. And with them swinging bats made of whitethorn around Ash wouldn't be risking it.

Fucking wonderful.

Then the kid closest to Ash took a swing and Ash ducked.  Jinxx dove for the other kid, who went down with an ominous crunch of breaking bones.  He grimaced; shoddy workmanship on the part of their maker, but it did make his life a bit easier.

“Get up the wall shit head.”  If Ash could make the rooftops and get away he could change and outrun just about anything.  Jinxx knew he could make the two story leap, and Ash could jump higher than he could if he was motivated to.

Chilling laughter had him pausing and looking up from where he had the one ghoul flat on his face and keening in pain.

Shadows at the edges of the roofs; lots of _human_ shaped shadows.

And some of them were armed with crossbows.  Given how Ash’s attackers had been armed he suddenly had a very bad feeling about this.

“I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Andy. 

Jinxx let out a little sigh of relief, didn’t ask how Andy had found them, and reached for the power pool that their Prophet carried around, that let him extend his othersight up into the shadows of the rooftops.

That just let him see that the three crossbows he could see all had bolts made of whitethorn and were tipped in silver.

Then he was screaming in pain as one tried nailing his shoulder to the pavement.

~0~

Yu swore when he heard the screaming and took off at a sprint.  He heard Kiro yelp and knew Kiro and Rom would be right on his heels.

What he didn’t expect was Christian and Jason to shift and be flanking him before he’d made the leap for the fire escape to get some height.

Lycans in hybrid form were a touch creepy.  At least they were on the same side.  But he was glad he was running _with_ then and not _from_ them, the hybrids and vampires made the leap to the roof in one bound, where Yu had to sprint up three flights of fire escape steps.  He took some comfort in the fact that the rest of the human contingent was hot on his heels.

The cluster of a dozen or so human shapes at the edge of a roof a few streets over gave him a bad feeling.  When one of them fired down into the alley and the screaming took on another pitch he was all for carving the lot of them to bits.  But then he registered the disgusted chuffing growls from Rom, Jason and Christian.

Lycan only made those noises around ghouls.

He felt a grin stretch over his features.

Ghouls he could take out with clear conscience.

He took off a sprint again.

Behind him Mikko’s eyes went round then narrowed as he shook his wings out and launched skyward with a bit of help from Sammy.

Julian let out a squeak and Luminor gaped in shock at the winged shape that shot skyward in apparent defiance of gravity.

Sammy just swore and took off after Yu at a dead sprint as a coil of golden light began to spiral out from the alleyway.

~0~

Theon gaped in shock.  Mikko had wings.  Sammy’s little bondmate had wings, could fly and had just put off a power pulse that had Jules freaking out.  Sammy had put down linked hands and just thrown Mikko up into the air and he'd moved like it was a practiced thing and...

He gave himself a hard shake when he heard Kiro scream Yu’s name and took off running after Vivian as the vampire bolted for where their brothers were fighting a clutch of ghouls that weren’t dying like they should be.  The slice Yu just gave one should have killed it and it was trying to come at him with one arm barely hanging on by a scrap of skin and a huge gaping hole in its chest.

He stumbled when he felt it and skidded on hands and knees over the rock on the rooftop.

A Destroyer, someone had Called a Destroyer.

Of all the incredibly insane, **stupid** things to do.  You didn't use nukes when a gun would do.

He scrambled again, hearing Luminor’s voice in a calm chant over Strify’s strained sounding counterpoint.  They were trying to both help disable the uber ghouls and be ready to deflect the blast of a Destroyer.

He thought he could hear the eerie keening cry of a creature he’d only read about.

If there was a Destroyer around, what were the odds of a Mourner as well?

Fucking wonderful.

~0~

Andy was pissed, beyond pissed. CC had freaked out enough that he’d lost control of his powers, Jake was singing to help give him a reference to come back to himself.  He had the irrelevant thought that the next time some idiot interviewer asked why Jinxx and Ash sang back up but Jake didn’t they should tell the nitwit it was because Jake had a voice that could warp solid steel, but that might not be enough of a hint.

Hell, _Naming_ him The Mourner wasn't a big enough clue that people had caught on.  It was all ‘look at the cute little rock band trying to be all punk and tough’.

Fuckers.

He was pushing out light trying to find the right frequency to drive the ghouls back without flattening Ash as he tried to help Jinxx stem the bleeding from his shoulder.  He'd pushed the head of the bolt through and cut it off, but had a bad feeling about the empty hollow behind the head.

Then he heard something that sent his blood cold.

The heavy beat of huge wings.

They so did not need demons doing death from above right now.

The heavy snap of a crossbow far to close had him yelping.  The feel of strong slim arms around his waist dragging him sideways off Jinxx had him swearing and he lost his control of the light.

Without it, it was _really_ fucking **dark** in the alley.

Blue eyes glowed at him from the darkness.

Andy gulped.  Things with wings and glowing eyes had always meant trouble before.

“Prophet.”  The thing Named him.  “Beloved.” It continued in a cryptic way as surprisingly gentle fingers traced over his cheekbone.

Then he heard other noises, sounds of things killing and dying and he prayed with quiet fervor that none of the dead were the men he loved.

He also prayed **he** wasn’t about to be dead.

The blue eyes blinked, and then with a rush of wings they were gone.  Andy panted in shock.

It hadn’t killed him.

“Andy!  I need your help here… they _poisoned_ Jinxx!”

That got him moving, and confirmed his bad feelings about that hollow space in the bolt Jinxx had been hit with.  He was back on his feet and whispered the first spell that came to mind and pushed as much as he could into it before throwing it skyward.

A flower of ruby light bloomed overhead and he was running to help Ash with Jinxx.  He thought he remembered the spell to purge silver and silver nitrate from lycans.

~0~

Bright light to pitch black tobright light again was killing his head.  The fact he'd ducked while flinching away from the latest flowering of light took him out from under the swiping arm of one of the ghouls and carried it right into the strike from Yu’s sword. Yu had started going for full on dismembering shots when simple wounding or killing blows proved less than effective.

He felt the peculiar twist of energies that told him the demon slaying blade had taken out a demon kin.

No _wonder_ the damn things were so hard to kill.  They'd been invested with minor demons.  The blows would have to actually take out the demon as well as the ghoul.

“Strify!” he yelled, hoping to be heard and understood over the racket.  “Demon slayers!”

He rummaged in his bag and pulled out his powders and began chanting under his breath.  With his containments and a few of Strify’s short term demon slayers they could win this.

No time for finesse, this was survival.

~0~

CC was sobbing into Jake's chest and letting the other man croon wordless comfort as he stroked his back.

Then he looked up and saw something lining up a shot on Andy’s back and screamed in agonized negation.

~0~

Andy heard CC scream but then the world was turning inside out under the wave of power the Destroyer let lose trying to defend those he loved.  But CC's power was rather like a tsunami, sweeping _everything_ before it.

He  let out a strangled cry of his own and tried to shield Jinxx and Ash but couldn’t feel anything until the pressure from the power wave was suddenly _gone_ , it left him staggering _as_ he looked up to see the undersides of leathery wings, spread to shield them and blacked out.

~0~

Ash winced.  He felt burned all over and his right arm was numb.

“Anybody get the number of that fucking bus?”

He felt the chuckle bubble out, but it hurt to laugh.  Jake at least was okay enough to cuss.  Now to figure out who was sleeping on him.

Opening his eyes was painful, and once they were open the white ceiling really wasn’t all that informative.  It hurt to breathe, but not like he'd broken ribs, just a general hurt that matched the aches in the rest of his body.

He rolled his head left.  Jake was on a couch and had CC cradled across his chest and in his arms snoring away into Jake's shoulder.  Jake was stroking a hand over CC's hair, reassuring himself that his Destroyer was still in one piece, that his lover was still breathing. He was moving a touch gingerly, but didn't look to be to badly damaged.

Well that was good; whatever had flattened them hadn’t taken out two of his friends.  He tried to roll his head right and got a face full of black hair.  He winced and tried to ease his arm free, that just got him a whimper and a long thin arm wrapping tighter around his chest.

That answered that question; Andy was being an octopus again.

Light footsteps came closer and a pair of large square hands helped him escape Andy’s clutches.

“We have another one awake.”

Ash blinked at the oddly musical accent on the English.  But winced as blood flow went rushing painfully back into his arm.

“Which one?” called back another voice, this one sounding less accented, more like a voice from home.

“Bloodsucker,” came a third voice in a laconic droll.

“I’ll have to feed him then, Jules and Jason can’t, and I don't know if any of Kiro's friends is awake to ask if they are willing,” said the second voice as the owner of the first one helped Ash sit up.  “And I'm not about to wake them if I can help it.”

Ash blinked and tried to puzzle out the warm buzz under his skin.  The first voice belonged to a big, square blond man with soft blue eyes and a wry smile.  After a moment he realized why his skin was humming, the man felt like a vampire did with the warm heavy weight of a High line behind his aura.  Then his eyes went huge when he saw the second speaker.

Golden blond hair and bright blue eyes, those didn’t faze him, nor did the man’s slender grace or relatively short stature.

He had _wings_.  Like enormous bat type wings folded neatly at his back.

Ash gulped as his hand reached out to touch the soft black wing closest to him.  It felt like sun warmed velvet.  The wings owner gave him a wry smile as the first speaker wrapped his big arms around the smaller blond in a very clear message of ‘ _my_ mate, you’re feeding by _my_ good will’.  Ash gulped again and accepted the wrist that was offered biting down with far more care than he ever had before.

He’d never fed from demons kin before, but he wasn't about to say no.  Saying no right now could have very bad consequences for his team. They were beaten enough without him making a hash of the hospitality rules of a group he didn't know anything about.

The first swallow made him aware of how hungry he was, the second and third made him feel drunk.  After the forth he had to let go or black out.  He managed to remember to lick the bite closed but only just.

As it was he was still being helped to lie back down as his head was spinning.

Andy had found one.  He couldn’t fucking believe it, Andy had actually found one.

Relief mixed with worry followed him down into darkness.

They just might be able to save CC.

But what had happened to Jinxx?

~0~

Sammy smiled as he watched their most mobile guest.  Luminor,vJulian and Jason had done what they could for his shoulder and he’d been fed one of Kiro’s potions while he was out.  Strify having a fit had awakened him and Mikko had given Strify a look that had Christian and Jason both sitting down and shutting up long before they’d realized exactly what he was.  Granted it had a bit more punch now as a Nephilium, but it had been effective as just a man.  He liked knowing the ' **you** are an **_idiot_** ' look worked on more than just his friends.

Jinxx had found himself planted securely at Sammy’s kitchen table with a mug of Mikko’s hot chocolate by his good hand before he could do more than blink.

Just to tweak Strify’s nerves he was leaving his wings out.  And being able to pet those soft velvet expanses any time he felt like it made Sammy happier than he’d ever realized it could.  Even Julian’s wide eyed stare hadn’t been able to put a damper on his quiet joy.

Ironically that seemed to help.

Jason and Christian were coping, but they’d smelled things off Mikko that had made them jittery before.  Things that now had a very clear answer, and even if it was making the rest of the guys nervous it was calming them down.

Theon had had a nice round of hysterics once everyone had been picked up and brought home.  He could cope with magic, vampires and lycan, those were everyday things.  But a Destroyer?  No matter how young, those were things to be treated with extreme caution, and most conventional sources said they were to be drugged senseless and killed at the soonest possible opportunity.  Even the Maya and Inca _killed_ Destroyers rather than let them run lose, their powers were so dangerous to those around them.  Granted from what the experts could tell that had been couched as voluntary ritual sacrifice, but it was still systemic murder.

Not an option here.  Not when Jinxx showed all the precursors of being a lycan Mystic, and would refuse to help.  He held a quiet power even in a pair of borrowed sweats and a shirt three sizes too big and his arm in a sling.  Add in a Mourner, a vampire and whatever the hell the fifth member of their little troop was and it was something Sammy would rather not have angry with him.  Just messing with a Mourner or their charge could be hellishly messy and Mikko had told him he was pretty sure the Mourner was attached to the Destroyer.

So killing this Destroyer was pretty much not happening, at least not by his team anyway.  Sammy didn't think Kiro's team was partial to the idea either.

Luminor didn’t have an issue with Mikko, and Kiro knew him as a fellow student.  Shin was just grateful the unquiet dead weren’t bothering him as much now that the ghouls were taken care of.  Rom could care less about things as long as Shin was safe and happy. If Shin was safe he'd live with a greater demon in the living room, so a Mourner and Destroyer pair was nothing.

They still had a vampire problem, but without demon backed muscle they might be easier to take care of.

Yu had already voiced the opinion that one of the lesser vampires they were after might have been a demon summoner in his prior life.

That was a complication that they’d need everyone for.

Strify and Jules would just have to get over their wobbly of having Nephilium and Destroyers in the house.

A strangled gasp had Sammy turning.

Ah, another of their guests was up and moving.  The one that was so painfully thin Julian had grumbled about feeding him and that Mikko was acting oddly protective of.

_~Prophet.~_

_~Prophet of **what** though love?~_ Sammy thought at his bonded as he turned away from where he was stirring a pot of his rather justly famous chicken soup.

_~If I knew I’d tell you.  But he is beloved of kin.~_

Well, that was delightfully cryptic.

“Are you what I think you are?” The tall man asked warily, edging slightly toward his friend.

Mikko sighed and Sammy had to bite his lip to keep from laughing.

“You sing about Nephilium and you don’t know one when you see one?”

Jinxx perked up.

“You really are a fallen angel?”

Sammy heard Christian’s snicker and the slap that Jason gave his shoulder.

Mikko went over to the pantry for bread.

“No.  Descendent of one, yes. Second generation.”

The tall one blinked and seemed to deflate.

“I thought you would be taller.”

Sammy cracked up at the plaintive tone.

“Andy,” Jinxx protested weakly.

“What?”

Jinxx just gave up and laughed weakly.

Mikko just sighed as he went after cheese and shoved it at Sammy with an injunction to slice it, preferably without also slicing his fingers.

“Why does the generation matter?”  Sammy looked over at the sound of another voice and saw the Mourner watching from the arch between the kitchen and living room, his hazel eyes wary.

“It matters because most of us are exempt from the Edict. Are you Andy or Jake?”

“Jake,” answered Jake as he walked over to give Andy a one armed hug and rest a hand on Jinxx’s good shoulder.  “Andy’s the skinny one.”

“Edict?” Andy’s curiosity was now fully roused.

“As in we aren’t born to a side, like Men we get to choose.”

Clearly that meant something profound.

 _~And?~_ Sammy probed.

 _~I chose you silly.  I will serve with you for all my days.~_ The wave of affection made Sammy smile.

Hell with guests, they could watch him collecting a few more kisses.

~0~

Andy made a face when the big blond guy wrapped the Nephilium up in his arms and began making with the cute as bad as Jinxx ever had with Sammi.  Jake just rolled his eyes and stole a sip from the mug by Jinxx's hand.

Andy watched as he rolled the mouthful around before swallowing it.  Then he set it down back by Jinxx's hand and prowled over to sniff at the pot on the stove.  Then Jinxx sighed.

“Jake, they aren't going to poison us.”

“Maybe not you,” was the cryptic comment as Jake went on to poke and sample just about everything edible looking in the kitchen.  He even warily picked up a spoon and sampled the soup, looking faintly surprised at the taste

Andy looked down at Jinxx and shared a grimace.  Nobody could say Jake was less than devoted, not and keep any credibility anyway.  He was just surprised the Nephilium both seemed to know what he was doing and didn't seem to mind.

Of course he _was_ a touch distracted.

“Wheee....”

Andy stiffened and turned back toward the living room.

Jinxx started to rise and winced as he jostled his shoulder.

“That sounded like Ash.”

Jake frowned and was moving even as the lovebirds finally broke apart.

“He, ah, might be a little high.”

Jake glared at the little blond as he smoothed long hair away from his face.

“Why?”  Jinxx beat them both to the question as Jake headed to catch their wayward vampire.

“He needed fed; our two safe donors already had donated for Vivian and Sammy.  So he fed from me.”

Andy boggled.  The level of cute made him think that the pair in front of him were bonded mates.  If things were urgent enough that his mate let him feed someone else...

“Okay.  Why did he have to feed from you? And why would that make him high?”  Jinxx asked in wary curiosity.

“Jason got to Sammy while I was still reeling from deflecting a Destroyers wrath.  And Jason and Sammy have been best friends for most of their lives.”  A shrug, one that was rather telling.  And Andy boggled again; two of the men out in the living room felt lycan to him, most lycan were unpalatable, to say the least, to vampires.  Of the two humans one was clearly the bonded mate of a vampire and the other had the slightly pale look of a human who had just been bled.

“I thought Nephilium were the jealous sort,” hazarded Andy, not asking all the questions he had building up in his head yet.  That got him a laugh and two smiles from the men in question.

“Oh he is.”  The voice was droll and the blocky shape coming up from what had to be a set of stairs to a lower level moved up into the light.  “He's a vicious little thing too, but not to us.”

Andy watched as the man came closer, revealing tousled shoulder length dark hair and amused blue gray eyes that were doing the odd staring right through him while not looking directly at him trick that only lycan seemed to do.

“Relax cub, I'm not about to go after your pack.”

Andy blinked and looked down at where Jinxx had tensed up.

“Uh?”

“No introductions yet?”

Andy mutely shook his head no.

“I'm Romeo, that's Sammy and Mikko, Mikko's the short one.”  The jab sounded like an echo of Andy's earlier plaint about expecting Nephilium to be taller.  Romeo then pointed to others that could be seen from the kitchen.

"Jason," another blocky man with short dark hairbut his face was more roughly cut and his eyes were more blue.  He looked up and offered a small smile before turning back to the slender man with dark hair in his arms.  The slim one was Julian and was clearly not someone to flirt with.  Not when the other man curled up with him was named Christian and looked up with a level stare at the sound of his name.

The other slender man with black hair had the odd name of Vivian and the blond curled up with him in one of the oversized chairs was Theon.  Vivian offered a small smile while Theon playfully waggled his eyebrows and grinned.

“The rest of the crew is asleep upstairs.  Kiro and Strify were pretty flattened trying to contain the demons in the ghouls bodies.  And Shin is needing to rest after dealing with so many unquiet dead.”

“Did the tea help?”

Romeo smiled at Mikko's question.

“I think sleeping under Julian's wards is helping more, but I won't say it didn't help.  And it smells better than the stuff Kiro makes.”

Mikko let out a snort as he pulled out a pan.

“I promise not to tell Kiro you said that.”

Andy felt strong arms wrapping around his ribs and heard a rather drunken sounding giggle.  He shared a resigned look with Jake and sighed again when Jake shrugged at him and leaned against the wall where he could see into the kitchen and the living room by simply turning his head.  Then Andy looked down to see Ash's brown eyes looking up at him.

“Hi!” Ash was being awfully chirpy.

Andy squeaked.  Ash was also being awfully handsy and those clever hands were going places that Andy would rather they didn't go in public, normally if Ash got blood drunk he'd pet the bit of skin on his spine just above his leathers, in borrowed sweats Ash was delving quite a bit further down. It didn't help that Ash was now nuzzling at Andy's chest through the thin fabric of the t-shirt he had no recollection of owning, never mind putting on this morning.

Why was it that when Ash got wasted he wanted inside Andy’s skin with him?

“Um. A little help?”

Jake let out a rude noise and walked away to settle beside CC and stroke his fingers through the sleeping drummers hair.  Andy turned pleading eyes on Jinxx.

Jinxx blinked at him and picked up his mug to sip the cooling contents.

“You're on your own little brother.”

Andy let out a plaintive moan and looked pleadingly at the other men in the kitchen even as his arms wrapped gently around Ash's shoulders, one hand creeping up to brush over Ash's hair.  He loved Ash dearly, but he wasn’t about to take advantage of him when he was clearly stoned out of his pretty little mind.

Sammy smiled at him and pointedly went back to helping Mikko cook.

Rom made a rude noise and after a bit of pointed sniffing and a sharp look at Jinxx headed out into the living room.  From there Andy could hear footsteps going up another set of stairs.

“What was _that_ look all about?”

Jinxx smiled and refused to answer.

“I think it's a commentary on not messing with bonding couples,” offered Mikko from where he was working.

Andy froze, one hand cupping the back of Ash's skull the other around his shoulders.

“Bonding?”

Andy felt like the world was coming apart under his feet.  He looked down at the soft hair under his fingers and had the panicked thought that he and Ash couldn't possibly be bonding.  Ash loved women, _all_ women; he wouldn't want to be tied down to one man.  No matter how cuddly Ash got when drunk.

They couldn't be bonding.  He had a girlfriend for crying out loud.  So they absolutely could not be bonding.

Could they?

~0~

Romeo purred quietly as he settled into the borrowed bed beside Shin.  Even deeply asleep the other man turned and reached for him.  He burrowed under the blankets and let his slender lover cuddle closer. Romeo smiled at the feel of soft lips and warm breaths on his throat.

If this was what sleeping under a Wardsmith’s rune wards did, he was going to have to find a way to make it where his beloved Speaker could sleep protected more often.

~0~

Yu watched as Romeo came in and burrowed in next to Shin and smiled a little as his heart brother relaxed into sleep beside his mate.  Then he looked down into Kiro's laughing eyes.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” Kiro chirped back, squirming up so they could rub noses.  They'd already had one round of slightly rough, passionate 'we survived' sex and now Yu was looking forward to the more gentle explorations that followed the first round of urgency.  He'd heard Lumi and Strify doing their own post battle high therapy and had listened in to Strify's unquiet freak out over their allies having a Nephilium in their number.

“What do you think of the kids?”

Yu snorted and stroked a hand firmly up Kiro's spine.

“The one scares me.”

“The Destroyer?”

“No, well yes,” corrected Yu. “He scares me, but that's a fear I know how to deal with.  And he didn't lose it until his friends were threatened.  So he's not a complete loose cannon.”

He felt Kiro's nod.

“That does bode fairly well, and they all seem worried about him.  Even the vampire, and he's, well, _odd_.”

“He's a pervert you mean.”

Kiro giggled at Yu's dry observation, but Yu kept on.

“He was half fried from the Destroyer's power wave and he still tried to hit on you.”

Kiro giggled louder but nodded before he sobered a bit.

“Did you suspect Mikko was anything but an empowered human?”

Yu grimaced.  That deception was goign to smart for a while.  The Nephilium's camouflage was extraordinary. Kiro had known Sammy since before his conversion, and had been tehre for Sammy and Mikko's formal bonding ceremony in front of the vampire council.  He hadn't reacted to him then at all, so teh long second looks he'd collected had been a surprise.

“Not even a clue, if you, Lu and Strify hadn't reacted to him when we met up I'd never have even realized he was empowered at all.  **He** scares the **_hell_** out of me.”

Kiro wormed up a bit closer so they could look squarely into each other’s eyes.

“Why?”

Yu paused and groped for the words.

“He's so quiet, so calm, not like the demons.  Not violent, or vicious. No demon _ever_ cooks or would carry anyone they weren't commanded to.  They destroy, they don't shield or heal.”

Kiro nodded, but he'd been in a position to see Mikko drop from the sky as the man they called CC had flipped out and released his destructive power wave.  Mikko had dropped down and canted his wings up to shield three beings behind them.  His actions had deflected the worst of the wave up and away, but several of them had been tossed and battered about by it and it's reflections off the alley walls anyway.

And one of those tossed had been the vampire that called him mate.

Mikko hadn't escaped unscathed either, he'd been battered and weakened and had still tried to get to Sammy to help him and had accidentally got himself caught by Luminor's last spell that was combination casting out of demons and blessing to the former host.  His reaction was anything but what they'd expected.

He'd screamed and dropped to his hands and knees.  Jason had already shoved his wrist under Sammy's lips and all but forced the vampire to feed by the time Mikko lurched back to his feet shedding silver and gold sparkles everywhere.

Demon's screamed and often died under that spell. Two **had** died under that particular casting.  Mikko had screamed, but he'd risen looking very much like he had when they'd left the building Christian had found to use as a staging area.  So clearly some of the information they had on Nephilium was _far_ from accurate.

Once he'd been assured that Sammy was as well as he could be he went about the grim task of ensuring the ghouls were dispossessed of their demons and killed.  Yu had seen the stark terror on the faces of a few of them and the contrast between that fear and the quiet and fairly gentle man he'd thought he knew rattled him

Mikko had also been the one to insist the five limp bodies of the ghouls victims be brought along.  Even the Destroyer.  He seemed oddly protective of the tallest of the group and the pervert of a vampire, and Yu was pretty sure it wasn't the mother hen tendencies he'd already seen Mikko sharing with Sammy.  The man might be painfully thin but he was still an unknown companioning at least two very dangerous men.

And that _wasn't_ including the lycan or the vampire.  

He wasn't going to speculate on why Mikko was protective of the vampire.

Yu sighed and rolled over to pin Kiro's slighter frame under his taller one.

“Can we talk about this later?”

Kiro giggled and wrapped his arms around Yu's shoulders.

“I'm sure you can convince me.”

Yu growled and caught that impertinent mouth with his own and set about convincing his Summoner.

~0~

The sound of a guitar playing was the first clue CC had that he'd survived his fit of temper.  He whimpered and felt a pair of gentle, familiar hands stroking his hair and shoulders.  But strangely the sounds of a guitar playing didn't stop, it didn't _sound_ like Jinxx.

He whimpered again and tried to force his eyes open.

Black cotton, with a red logo he'd never seen before.

He breathed deeply.

The smell of the fabric softener wasn't familiar, but the scent of the man was.

Jake.

“Is he waking?”

A voice he didn't know, CC tried to turn and see and felt like his head was going to explode, so he buried his face in Jake's shirt and whimpered.

“I don't think he's enjoying the trip back.” came another unfamiliar voice, this one laden with a dark humor.

The first voice let out a rude noise.

“Given how Mik said _he_ felt after being at ground zero?  Not surprised.  And Mik got hit with a major blessing afterwards, this poor bastard didn't.”  An unfamiliar hand stroked over his hair.  “Hey buddy, it's gonna suck but we need you to sit up and drink something Mik and Kiro made to help your head.”

CC let out a plaintive whimper, but when Jake started helping shift him more upright, he tried to cooperate.

When he stopped moving, or at least thought he stopped moving, he wasn't sure he wanted to open his eyes and make sure he felt the rim of a mug at his lip.

“Drink babe, I tasted it, you're safe.”

CC sipped cautiously.  If Jake had tasted it and said he was safe, he was safe, but the liquid was still hot.  He tasted something bitter, kind of like aspirin, the tart of lemon and the sweetness of honey all mixed in with something green and faintly earthy.  It tasted a _lot_ better than the high power Theraflu stuff Andy normally found to help his headaches.

Once the mug was empty it was taken away and the gentle hands were back on him.

“Open your eyes.”

CC whimpered but did as he was asked.  A pair of blue green eyes stared into his.  CC blinked and the eyes moved away where he could see a square face topped with a crest of dark brown hair and a chin covered in a neat goatee.  It was nagging at him, something about the hands as they gently checked him over the rest of the way.  A few spots made him flinch but not like he'd done himself serious injury.

“Congratulations, you'll live.”

Another mug of whatever it was they'd been feeding him was put to his lips.  CC drank, he might not know what it was but Jake was encouraging him to drink and it was helping his head feel more normal and less like it might explode at any moment.

Then he jerked as memory returned.

“Wings, the guys with wings, is he okay?  He was right in front of me. And Andy!  Ash! They were right there!”  He struggled more upright. “They were right in front of me!”

Jake caught his face in both hands and kissed him to stop the tumble of words.

When Jake let him go he could turn and see Andy and Ash on the couch across from him, Ash deeply and limply asleep sprawled out over a resigned Andy's chest.  Perched on the arm of that couch was Jinxx, his right arm in a sling and his shoulder bandaged, with a mug of something steaming away gently in his left hand.

“We're all okay.”

“But,” CC protested then the words died as a shortish slender blond came over and half knelt in front of him.

“I'm okay.  I _knew_ what I was getting in the way of.  And Lumi accidentally fixed most of the damage you did.”

CC boggled and reached a hand out.  He'd seen that gold hair blown back by his power, seen those wings cant up and hold even as the body under them collapsed to hands and knees trying to keep the wings up.  Wings that had sheltered his friends from the worst his powers could do.

“You're what Andy wrote about.”

The smile was sudden and made the blue eyes light with silent laughter.

“I've already teased him about that.”

“Rub it in,” came the half grumble from Andy.  “He's short.”

“Compared to you almost everyone is short, Andy.” retorted the blond.

CC leaned into Jake's comforting warmth and tried to make sense of things.

~0~

Andy was still wrapping his mind around Ash apparently wanting him as a mate.  It wasn't that he didn't think Ash had it in him to love, he _knew_ he did, he saw it constantly in every cup of coffee put under his nose and every favorite food or much missed treat remembered while on the road.  Ash made sure they all ate, all had fresh coffee and didn't overload on energy drinks to the point they couldn't sleep.  But that was a different sort of love; he showed _that_ at everyone in the band.  It was personal, but not exclusive.

Even Ash handing him a pack of his preferred brand of smokes wasn’t personal, even though Ash had vocally groused about Andy’s smoking habits in the past.  He'd rather deal with the smoke smell than Andy jittering around like a mad thing on a nicotine low.

Andy also saw it in all the pretty girls Ash had in the hotel room and how he made sure they all had a cab back home when he was done entertaining them.  But again, that was a different sort of love, short term, passionate, but not really personal.

Andy grimaced.  Ash entertained a _lot_ of pretty girls.  Not that any of them was exactly lacking in that department when they were touring for shows.

He watched the pairs he could see without moving from the couch Ash had him pinned to.

Sammy, and he was going to have to show Jinxx's Sammi pictures or she'd belt him one for misusing her name, and his mate.  His Nephilium mate.  Well no matter the species the pair was stupid cute, sharing looks and touches and even mugs like Jinxx did with his Sammi, even before she'd moved back to the pack enclave to carry their cubs to term.  Vivian and Theon, and Vivian laughing when his flirt of a mate got growled at by Jake for pestering CC.  Theon seemed to be incapable of not poking at the Mourner though, and his over the top flirting had made CC smile, and that was the only reason Jake hadn't smacked the flirt a good one.

The two lycan and the slim kid called Julian made him wonder.  Lycan were notorious for not sharing mates, but those two treated Julian like he was their treasured lover and treated each other with clear affection beyond the ties of pack mates and hunt brothers.  The other lycan kept curling up by his mate, and the blond didn't act like he was quite all there.  The look in his eyes said it was related to magic of some sort not drugs and Jason had asked after him calling him a Speaker, so Andy wondered what his gift was.

The other pairs were more like regular lovers.  Lovers with a long history to be sure, in spite of relatively young ages.

The tall man called Luminor gave him the wobbles, and felt like a priest of some flavor.  But no priesthood he knew of espoused male lovers; and the little spitfire of a mage was _clearly_ the taller man's lover.  Strify reminded Andy a bit of himself, but he didn't think he was as much of a diva, and knew he wasn't a fashionista of any flavor.

The other pair was a Summoner, Andy knew what that felt like power wise and his partner, a Demon Slayer.  As in the kind who were born to the job, not fell into it.  An odd pairing to say the least.  Slayers tended to be brutally pragmatic when dealing with the demon problems of the world, and that usually meant a dead Summoner.

His eyes trailed over his own misfit family.

Jake was as relaxed as he ever got with CC not feeling well.  CC at least had been able to eat a little and had been sipping the odd tea that Kiro and Mikko had compounded to help ease his pain without disabling him completely.

That gave him hope that they could do something about helping CC escape the burden of his powers.  He refused to think there was nothing they could do and would be damned if he lost his friend and near brother to some stupid ass prejudice based on superstition and fear.

That and his brutally practical side didn't want to find another drummer.  They were just lucky they'd known CC already and he was a damn fine drummer when Sandra had had to step out for her own health.  That she'd then had her own mate trip over her had just been funny.

He smiled a little at the memory and quietly promised that as soon as they could they'd track Sandra and her mate down and see about spoiling their honorary nephews a bit.  He knew Jinxx still was full of questions about how two women had ended up with the fertile one pregnant without outside male help.

Jinxx was healing, but hadn't been allowed the change that would have fixed his shoulder.  Jason said it wasn't good for him to change with traces of silver still in his blood.  And when Andy had asked how he knew the blocky lycan had smiled and tapped the side of his nose and said he could still smell it.

Ash was zonked out, a dead weight draped over his chest that turned into an octopus any time he tried to get up.  And other than a faint headache Andy felt he was okay.

They were recovering.

They would go back to looking for the people who had made the monsters that had tried to kill Ash and had done Jinxx serious harm when they were a bit more coherent as a group.

At least they had allies.

Andy stroked his fingers through Ash's soft black hair.

And maybe, maybe they'd found friends.

~0~

Three days of healing added up to a severe case of cabin fever for Andy.  Ash slept the better part of two of those days, only waking when someone shook him awake for food or bathroom runs.  Andy had reluctantly forced his wrist under Ash's lips and bullied him into feeding.  He'd come down from the intense orgasm feeding induced feeling a bit like a rapist, but the only other normal humans handy were mated or not really the sort Andy wanted Ash feeding on.  Kiro was cute, and Strify was sexy as hell, but both had hyper vigilant lovers that Andy really didn't want glaring at Ash for things he couldn't help.  Shin couldn't feed him without nasty consequences, and Andy really didn't want some wandering spirit taking up residence.  Shin was spacy enough without help, nice guy, but major space cadet.

It didn't help that clearly things were being done that he wasn't being told about.  Andy had overheard several conversations where it sounded like a patrol of some flavor had been done and the results were being discussed.

Mikko had made a rather cryptic comment about the lesser vampires being skittish if a Nephilium was flying overhead.

Vivian's tart remark about Nephilium overhead making _him_ jittery had made Strify and Julian both chuckle weakly.  Clearly they shared the opinion.

He'd looked over the maps they'd had spread over one of the tables in the upstairs lounge area and winced at how big of an area they had to cover to try and find the people who had hurt Ash and Jinxx.  Then he'd realized what the little red, blue, black and green pins marked and blanched.

He'd had to ask what the colors meant.

Christian had given him an odd look but then settled down to explain.

Blue was them and a few others who had been rescued.  The little cluster of blue pins was literally where they'd been picked up.  Around the blue was a scattering of black pins to represent the demon ridden ghouls that had been taken out in that fight.

There were a few other black pins scattered over the map, always near a blue or green pin.

The green were either folks who had been able to run and escape or had been able to rescue themselves, usually by killing their attacker.  Some of the green tags had a red flag indicating they'd been infected while trying to escape.  A few of those also had a black flag that Andy had a bad feeling about, but didn't ask about.

The red were less fortunate, they'd mostly died where they had been found.  Only a few had been dumped, and those were marked by a pin in a different shade of red.

There were a _lot_ of red pins on the map.

Christian went on to explain the numbers by each pin were dates and times.  Times bodies were found and suspected times of death for the red pins, relative times for attacks for the blue and green.

Andy felt a little sick.  All the attacks happened after dark, usually a couple hours after sunset to an hour or two after midnight. Many happening within minutes of closing time for the bars.  Now that he knew to look for dates he was able to tell that the attacks were mostly random, probably targets of opportunity.

Like Ash had been.

Jason came in and settled by his pack mate and the two lycan shared a mug of tea as they filled him in on the rest of their speculations.

Only the seriousness of the conversation kept him from grimacing at the cute between the two.  Two big blocky men should not be able to _do_ cute.  And the cute factor ratcheted up when Julian came in and was cradled between the two.

He'd never actually met a real Wardsmith before.  He knew Sandra’s brothers were studying the craft but had never met the Master they were training under.

Julian's eyes went a bit unfocused for a moment, then he smiled a little.

“Mikko is back.”

Andy frowned.

“Mikko left?”

Jason smiled and answered before Julian could.

“He's been flying random sweeps to keep the vampires nervous.”

“That'll only work for so long,” Andy felt compelled to warn.  From the collection of grimaces his words garnered, they were all too well aware that once the vampires got hungry enough they would risk death from above just to feed.

And given it had been four days since their last feed when Ash had been attacked, and _that_ had been three days ago...  Well, by now they would have to be getting a bit desperate.  They might be resorting to cannibalizing their weaker members, but with common vampires disintegrating to dust in sunlight after death the odds of them finding proof of that was so unlikely Andy expected Ash to swear off women and become a monk before they found anything.

Desperate people did stupid things, regardless of species.

“I think they're going to move tonight.  I startled at least two off their prey.”

Andy turned and gulped at how sober the blond Nephilium looked.

“So we need to move tonight?”

Andy still found himself blinking at how deep Luminor's voice was.

“Are we _ready_ to move tonight?”  Kiro asked as he ducked under Luminor's arm to get into the room.  Behind him came the rest of his team as well as Sammy and Theon.

His own guys came in following Vivian like so many lost ducklings.

Sammy took over the meeting.

“So, status?”

“They are getting bold, or desperate.  I spooked two just flying over tonight.”

“Before or after killing?”

Andy grimaced at Yu's bluntness, but Mikko didn't look to be fazed in any way.

“Before. And I freaked out one of the potential prey, so I don't think they'll come back in the area for a bit.”

Yu nodded and settled beside Kiro and stared at the map almost blindly.

“Where did you scare them off?”

Mikko took two yellow pins from Theon and after a bit of thought placed them.

Andy winced. They were both within a few blocks of where they'd tried to get Ash.

“Idiots.  They haven't moved.”  Andy rather agreed with Christian's pithy comment.

“They may be doing the 'we don't have to move, you cleared the area' thing,” offered Julian.

That collected a number of grimaces and a few reluctant nods.

“So, who's gonna have to play bait?”

Andy winced at CC's question.

He wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer to that question.

~0~

Andy wished he'd been able to talk CC out of playing bait.

As it was being curled up on the rooftop beside Christian and looking down was making his gut twist.

The only reason he hadn't had a full on hysterical fit was that he knew Destroyers blood wasn't palatable to vampires.  And if CC got scared enough he'd lose his hold on his powers and flatten whatever was attacking him.  Probably.

He still wanted to have a fit about one of his best friends playing vampire bait to a bunch of highly contagious lesser idiots with no concept of 'consensual donation'.

 He suspected they'd decided on Christian as his babysitter simply because he was bigger, stronger and could easily keep him from doing anything to terribly stupid.

Like jumping between a hungry common vampling and his friend.

Christian gave him a gentle nudge and led the way over the rooftops trailing behind CC's wandering path.

He really wished he didn't see shadows starting to collect behind his friend.

~0~

CC wished Jake was with him, rather profoundly after he felt the prickling of a hostile gaze on the back of his neck.

But Jake would have been at far too much risk as _he_ was palatable to vampires, his periodic feedings of Ashley having been brought up as a reason why he shouldn't be helping play bait.

It didn't help his nerves.

Having one of the shadows step out and glare at him with yellow eyes made things a bit worse, and in spite of his resolve to show no fear CC took a step back.  He took another when three more shadows resolved into vampires.

He gulped and forced himself to pay attention.

None of the vampires, and now he could see six and could hear more, looked particularly healthy.  All of them were painfully thin, thinner even than Andy at his worst.  The one closest to him on the right had the yellowish tinge to his skin that a heavy drinker had right before they died.

“Uh,” he started and got hissed at.

“Destroyer,” hissed one.

Then he heard the snap of wings overhead and several of the meeker vampires scuttled back into cover.  The strongest though just hissed again.

Then he felt one grabbing his arms and dragging him down.

CC yelped and tried not to scream as he tried to kick the thing away from him.

He could hear Jake screaming spared a moments pity for whoever was trying to hold the Mourner back, but then he was scrambling and struggling to not become a hostage.

CC kicked one hard in the teeth and found himself on his knees in a circle of the monsters.

He'd never considered vampires monsters before.

He could hear the harsh 'skritch' noise of a crossbow cocking from somewhere above and hoped he wasn't about to get nailed to the pavement like Jinxx had.  That had looked hellishly painful, and he hated pain.

The sounds of a chant had the hair on the back of his neck and his arm raising up.  The only voice at all familiar in the mass was Andy's and he shivered.

“Prophet.”

CC's eyes went round as one of the vampires stepped closer and sniffed him.  That was something he hadn't counted on.

Hell, it was something they all _prayed_ never happened.

“He's not yours.”

Sammy's voice, calm and collected over the chant.

The vampire looked up and smiled a hellish smile.

“He will be.”

The next words twisted, refused to resolve into coherent language and the world twisted around him.

~0~

Kiro swore when he felt the twisting of reality that heralded a major summoning.

When his eyes cleared Yu was in front of him, his sword out.  On the other side of the alley he could see Rom with his katana and Strify casting as fast as he could on the crossbow and bolts and the clips of bullets in Luminor and Vivian's hands.

The Demon wasn't as high end as it could have been, but it was ugly as hell and was giving CC a toothy grin as it reached for him.

To his credit the Destroyer was keeping it together pretty well and hadn't blasted in sheer terror yet, but he was clearly scared.

“NO!”

Kiro didn't see Mikko dive, but he saw the demon reel and scowl upwards.

He grimaced and gripped a vial of the powder that would immobilize most demons in his hand.  He could hear everyone shifting and could feel the power of the chant Luminor and Andy were using building.  Building faster than it ever had with Strify and Lumi pouring everything they had into it, and he'd heard the head ugly use the word 'prophet' right before summoning the Big Ugly.

Kiro grimaced.  He really needed to not use Yu's terms for demons; it was descriptive, but not helpful at time like these.

The main vampire glared up at where Mikko perched ready to take another dive if needed.  His initial attack had gotten the Demon off CC, and focused elsewhere, and let CC scramble back to his feet in the loose ring of common vampires.

Kiro edged a bit closer behind Yu.

“Can we get your sword to Mikko?”

Yu shook his head.

“Wouldn't work.  He can't carry a demon slaying blade when his wings are out.  Not where it’s useable anyway.”

Kiro swore under his breath.  So much for the easy solution.

Jason edged up beside them and Kiro couldn't stop the twitch.  Lycan in hybrid form just looked so creepy.

He got a chuckle that sounded anything but amused.

“Before you ask, he also can't just lift CC up to us.”

Kiro groaned, and then focused on the power threads of the chant and began weaving his own voice in.  Might as well help with what he could now.

Then the demon made a move, and not one Kiro expected; it launched a power bolt at the edge of the rooftops, shattering part of the wall and roof out from under their feet.

Most of them leapt clear, several of the vampires below hadn't been as fast and were crushed under the rubble.

CC scrambled clear, his mobile face sickened as he stared down at the face of one vampire crying for help where she lay half buried.

Then he was letting out a cry of negation as he realized what, or rather _who_ , the lead vampire had pounced on.

Ash hadn't gotten clear and had taken a tumble down to the streets and now had what looked to be a broken branch of whitethorn held across his throat.

Not a blade, just a branch, but CC felt a sinking feeling when the leader looked up at where Andy was still chanting under his breath.

“Mine.”

“Hell no.”

CC yelped when he felt cold metal on his neck, just a circle pointing up under the hinge of his jaw, and several hands grasping his arms.  The panic in Ash's eyes told him to not move, so he froze.

“Swords are so archaic in this day and age.”  The tone was conversational, and that made CC close his eyes in resignation.  But the bastard wasn't done.  “Guns are so much more useful.”

He could hear the whimpers of dying vampires; the lesser breeds were so terribly fragile, if they weren't dug out and fed blood, the buried would die, just like any normal human would. The ones deeper in the pile were probably already beyond help.

The demon had a strangely smug grin on it's ugly face and CC realized with a sick lurch the thing was feeding on the deaths of the dying common vampires.

Feeding on its allies.

He wanted to throw up.  The next words had him protesting without even thinking about it.

“I want the Prophet.”

The blow to his head had CC kneeling on the ground still protesting.

Ash had struggled halfway to his feet before a similar blow had put him back to his knees.

The demon let out a wet chuckle and came closer to take a deep breath right over CC's head, rather like a human smelling some fragrant flower.

It left CC cold, but even knowing the thing was feasting on his terror he couldn't stop being scared shitless.

The look in Ash's eyes hurt.  Terror was the least of it.

Sammy growled and CC could hear the lycan's growling in unhappiness and the restless shift of Mikko's wings.  His eyes scanned the broken rooftop for one face and settled when he finally found Jake.

Jake looked grim but nodded.

CC groped left until he felt Ash's right hand groping for his.

“How touching.”  The vampire looked up.  “The Prophet, or they die.”

Andy stepped forward, his eyes screaming his indecision.

CC closed his eyes.  This bastard had demons, he couldn't have Andy.  He'd destroy everything Andy was.

He felt Ash squeeze his fingers and looked up at Jake again.

Jake mouthed 'I love you' down at him and CC felt his eyes sting.

The Demon straightened as much as it's twisted body could and grunted in surprise just as CC reached into himself and ripped down all the walls he'd put up around his power, everything he and Jake and the guys had worked so hard to build he ripped down and with a glance at Ash and a confirming nod from him, let everything go.

~0~

 ** _“Get down!”_** yelled Jake as he dragged Andy back away from the edge.

Chants were forgotten as everyone scrambled to get some sort of cover as a wave of red gold power exploded outwards.

Andy screamed Ash's name and struggled for a moment as the power wave rose, then crested and died away.

“Move, move, move!”  Sammy shouted and Andy screamed again, struggling and then breaking into tears as he felt the power wave die.  Behind his shoulders he could feel Jake's sobs.

All he could do was turn and sob into Jake's chest and pray that they didn't lose Jinxx as well.

~0~

Yu took great glee in lopping the head of the demon clear of its shoulders.  Not even greater demons could shrug off the full force of a Destroyer's wrath.  His eyes stung and he told himself it was from the dust in the air.

Kiro had just flung a fistful of something yellow right in the face of a vampire and the thing had screamed and gone into convulsions.  Sammy had put the thing out of its misery by planting a stake in its chest.

That had Yu stopping to give Sammy a hard second look.  That powder was pure hell on vampires, and he'd thought it wasn't specific as to type.

Sammy just grinned at him and pointed at a small charm on his necklace.

Yu blinked, he'd seen it before, a black star in a red circle in a silver square, Sammy wore it constantly.  Then he was yelping as Sammy pounced him flat.

Why was answered by the echoing bang of a gun going off right over their heads.

“Didn't your mother ever teach you that guns are not toys?”  Mikko, his tone scathing as he held the vampire's wrist, the gun in the hand attached pointed safely skywards.

Yu let out a faint gurgle of amusement when a huge dark shadow behind the pair resolved into Christian in his hybrid form.

Mikko made sure the gun was no longer a problem, then Christian made sure the vampire wasn't one either.

Yu closed his eyes.

Beheading by brute force was really messy.  Thank goodness for Kiro's nasty tasting potion that prevented infection from contaminated blood.

When he wiped his eyes and looked around he realized the only people standing where his own team, Sammy's crew and Jinxx.

Jinxx who let out a startled cry and dropped to his knees.

A moment later and Mikko was scrambling to get to his side and calling for Jason and Kiro.

He wiped his sword and shared a look with Rom; together they made sure there were no survivors that weren't friendly.

~0~

“Holy hells, he's still breathing.”

It didn't feel like he was breathing, it hurt too damn much.

“Hold him, we need to force feed him.”

“What about CC?”

“I got an IV in him.  He's looking better than Ash.”  Was that Jason?  What was the stinging pain in his arm?  It felt different than the other pain he felt everywhere.

“Fuck!  Hold him still.”

“I'm **_trying_** , he's slicker than snot.”

A weak chuckle that hurt horribly.  But the memory of Ash in his briefs and drenched in lube, scampering around a hotel planted itself in front of his mind’s eye.  But the pain in his ribs kept dragging him back.

Ash had been impossible to catch.  Andy had resorted to wrapping him in a blanket and hauling him off bodily.

A low crooning sound helped, as did the steady thump of a heartbeat under his ear.  Jake was here. If Jake was here it was okay.

“Come on, come on, fuck!  Jase we need the blood bags and a needle.”

“Let me try.”

“Mik we need him coherent not stoned out of his mind.”

“No, let him try.  Even a mouthful will help.”  That was Sammy, he could hear someone humming, and it made a comforting counterpoint to the croon he could feel from the body wrapped around him.

He whimpered.

“Shhh, easy, easy.  You're safe, we're safe.”

“Ash?” he managed to croak.

“Messed up bad, but they're working on him.”

He whimpered again and forced his eyes to open.  Pain slammed into his head, pulsing flashed of bright agonizing light, but he could see a little around the flashes.

“Chris, CC no man,” Those gentle hands tried to keep him from looking, but he had to see had to know.

Ash was a blood covered mess.  He couldn't tell if the blood on his face was from failed attempts at feeding of just from his injuries.

He looked like he'd been skinned.

A sob, and the pain swept him back under.  The last thing he heard was Jason.

“We need to get him back, I can't keep...”

Blackness.

~0~

Jake paced.

CC was out cold and safely ensconced in a warm bed.  He'd awakened out on the scene, seen Ash at his bloody worst  and blacked out.

He hadn't fully roused since.  Mikko and Kiro's pain killing tea was being fed to him hourly in careful dribbles.  Sometimes he woke enough to sort of cooperate, sometimes he didn't.  Both men clearly had plenty of practice at getting fluids into an unconscious person that they had no problems feeding the tea, water and broth to CC.

A rubber sheet under the bedding helped them deal with the inevitable consequences of feeding CC fluids.  Mostly it wasn't needed, but sometimes it was.

Ash was in the next bed.

Ash looked more like himself and less like raw meat now, thanks to the nine blood bags Jason had dumped into him the minute they'd gotten safely back.  He still looked raw, and where he wasn't abraded he was terribly pale.  Andy had finally lost his battle to stay awake and been laid down beside the sleeping vampire.  His left hand resting over Ash's slowly beating heart.

Jinxx had come out the best.  He'd done something, Jake wasn't sure what exactly, just that he'd been glowing almost purple as he worked, and kept a few lurking nasties at bay as they'd moved their two badly wounded away from the disaster area of their battle site.  He'd helped get Ash cleaned up and now was providing a comforting level of background noise.

Jake really didn't want to think about the mess explanations were going to be.  He'd already heard Sammy and Vivian being pithy on their phones to someone about the situation.

He smelled what he now knew was Mikko's signature chicken soup.  It made him think of his grandmother's recipe that had always been a comfort during childhood illnesses.

He heard a low whimper and spun in place.  Jinxx looked up from where he'd idly been playing on a borrowed acoustic guitar.

Ash whimpered again, and moved restlessly.

Andy sat up and was bending over Ash, reaching to gently shake his shoulder.  Jake wasn't sure if trying to rouse him from whatever nightmare held him was a good idea or not.

He came down solidly on the 'not' side a moment later when Ash moved.

He went from flat on his back to crouched over a shocked Andy before Jake could blink.

Jinxx swore and Jake felt his eyes go round.

Ash's eyes were glowing amber and he was snarling defensively at them.

Jinxx held both his hands out and Jake echoed the posture.

“Ashley?  Buddy? It's us, Jake and Jinxx.  You're safe.  Andy and CC are safe.”

The low growl had Jake thinking CC's safety was the last thing on Ash's mind.

“Oh, he's awake.  Goodie.”  Mikko's tone was dry and unenthusiastic.  Ash's savage snarl his general direction made Jake wince.  “Joy.  Um.  No threat to your mate.”

Jake boggled for a moment, and glared when Jinxx snickered.

Ash growled and glared, tugging Andy off the far side of the bed and pulling him further away.

“So not funny man.”

“Other than the snarling and finding a defensible spot, yes it is.”

“If you say so.  I'll warn Sammy and Viv.”

Jake turned to glare at Mikko.

“Warn Sammy and Vivian, why?”

“Under the circumstances they'll probably go a touch feral,” there was a startled squeak and Jinxx started to fight a losing battle against laughter.

“Feral?”  Sammy had his arms around Mikko and was growling a bit more than Jake thought was normal.

“It's a vampire thing.  Ease off, you great lummox!  He's not a threat to me.”  Sammy let out another low growl that was echoed by a snarl from Ash where he had Andy backed into a corner of the room.

“So this is normal?”

Jake had to give Andy credit.  He was coping with having a snapping, snarling Ash being all grabby hands a lot better than he'd expected.

A high pitched yelp and Sammy had hefted Mikko up in his arms and was dragging him off.

Jinxx cracked up.

“You are no help at all.”

Jinxx flipped him off and flapped a hand at Ash when he growled.

“Sammy and Vivian just went, oh...  You already know.”  Kiro said as he skidded to a halt behind Jake.

Jake sighed and sent a mute prayer for deliverance up.  It wouldn't be answered, he knew it wouldn't, but he couldn't help trying.

Kiro cautiously came closer.  Ash watched him, but didn't growl more than the low level he was keeping up as a near constant sound.

“Let's get CC out of here.  Yu is getting our bed changed over so we can put him there and keep mindering him.”

Jake winced, but accepted the wisdom of the idea.  Carefully he wrapped CC up in the bedding and hefted his slender body up in his arms.

CC shouldn't feel so light and frail.

Jinxx got ahold of his giggles enough to help navigate CC's lanky frame out the door.

They'd barely cleared it when it slammed closed and Jake could clearly hear the latch click over to locked.

Kiro giggled at the door.

“I hope you don't end up needing anything from in there.

"Yeah." Jake observed somewhat caustically.  "Something tells me until teh vampire weirdness is over we aren't getting back in there."

“Probably not.”  Kiro grinned and went bouncing down the hall.

“Tell me again why the fuck I put up with this shit?”

Jinxx chortled at him before answering.

“Because you love us.  Moon and stars knows that's why I put up with you.”

Jake settled for a glare.  He wasn't about to risk dropping CC to free a hand to flip Jinxx off.

~0~

Andy licked his lower lip and decided that staying put after Ash had all but flown across the room to close and lock the door was probably a good thing.

That resolve only held until Ash turned and looked at him.

Now he thought he knew what the girls Ash entertained might feel like, that gaze was predatory.  The amber glow had faded a little, but Ash's eyes hadn't settled back to their normal warm brown.

Andy gulped.

Ash moved.

Andy found himself scrambling to put a bed between them.

Ash just let out a low chuckle and slowly circled.

Andy gulped again and tried to keep the beds between them.

That was only a limited success.

Andy squealed and ducked when Ash came at him over the bed.  Going under the beds felt childish, but it was his only option, so he went underneath and heard a startled sound from Ash as he looked under the beds at him. 

They sat up and stared at each other over the beds and Andy couldn't help the giggle that erupted.

Ash smiled at him.  Other than the fangs it was exactly like his regular happy smile

Other than the fangs, that was the sticky bit.

Andy gulped when Ash crawled up onto what had been CC's bed and did a hands and knees stalk over the bed.  He perched on the edge for a moment then leaped to the nearer bed.  Andy squeaked but didn't fight when Ash tangled his hands in his hair and pulled his face up.

Kissing was good.

Hell, kissing was fucking amazing.

Andy moaned and felt soft hair under his fingers.

A moment later and he felt a warm solid body under him and realized Ash had pulled and he'd followed until they'd fallen over.

He panicked for a second, Ash had been hurt badly, and he scrambled to make sure he hadn't made things worse.

Ash's skin was still a bit raw looking, and Andy hissed.

But Ash didn't seem to care; he just grabbed and rolled, planting Andy squarely under him.

“Ash, you're, mmmph!”

Kissing was still really nice, and Ash's hands were petting in ways that made it really hard to think.

Andy gasped and threw his head back with a low cry of pleasure.

Ash let out a please sounding noise and nuzzled at the exposed skin of Andy's neck as his hands kept working on the buttons on Andy's jeans.  A few nuzzles at the tender spots behind his ears had Andy squirming.

Then he felt teeth and had both hands tangling in Ash's hair to hold him in place as his blood felt like it was boiling over.

Lust slammed into him and Andy knew he was swearing, he could hear himself. The few words that weren't profanity were alternating pleas for more and threats to Ash's manhood if he stopped.

He needed to come; he needed it so badly he thought he was going to scream with wanting it.

Then he was screaming, screaming, thrashing and coming over Ash's hand.

He had a moment to stare blankly up into Ash's eyes.

“Whoa.  Awesome.”

Then he blacked out.

~0~

Coming around again was kind of nice.  He could feel that someone, Ash, his brain helpfully supplied, had stripped him to the skin.

That same someone was petting him, gentle strokes up between his thighs and over his belly.  Light enough that Andy felt his stomach muscles flutter, light enough to tease.

He let out a low groan, then gasped at the feel of a pointed tongue lapping up his perineum.

A low chuckle was the answer to his frustrated swearing.  A chuckle followed by warm lips nuzzling.

All Andy could do was moan and spread his legs wider.

Those warm lips moved down.

Andy whimpered and thrashed his head, fisting the bedding under his hands in helpless need.  Then that tongue lapped over his hole and he couldn't help the little lurch his body made.

He'd showered before his last watch over Ash.  Mikko had been insistent and Jinxx and Jake had backed the little Nephilium up, so he'd taken a long and rather decadent feeling shower just to keep them from pouting at him before he'd settled at Ash's side.

It still seemed weird.

Then it happened again and he was squirming.

Weird or not it felt kind of good.

When it began probing and a low hum sounded Andy amended that to felt really damn good and squirmed some more.

A delicate rake of teeth over his inner thigh had him pleading for something, just something more.

The light rake of teeth became a firm bite and Andy screamed again.  He was writhing in place and fighting to not come so fast this time.

It didn't help.

He came with a plaintive wail and painted his belly with his come.

This time he felt that wicked tongue lapping at the spill and had the irreverent thought that if the foreplay was this good full out sex just might kill him as the world slid away a second time.

~0~

The third time he woke he barely had the time to moan before he was coming hard into a teasing mouth.

He wanted to say something pithy about all this mess but he couldn't make his mouth form coherent words before reality slid sideways again.

~0~

The next time he woke up he felt light-headed and a little headachy.

Andy rolled his head a bit and realized the reason he couldn't feel his left arm was because there as a head planted on his shoulder.

Ashley.

Dead asleep, lashes dark on high cheekbones and lips softly parted as they breathed a warm spot on Andy's chest.

He also had one arm wrapped securely around Andy's chest and a leg thrown over his thighs.

Andy sighed and poked Ash's ribs with his free hand.

Nothing.

He dropped his hand to the bed with a thump.

Damn-it, he needed to pee!

So he started squirming as best he could.

Sitting up proved harder than he thought.

Ash kept trying to cuddle him back down for one.

The room kept spinning though, and _that_ was the more challenging problem.

Standing up might be a bit difficult.

Andy whimpered as his head thumped.

“ 'ndy?”

Ash was starting to wake up.  Andy had to giggle a bit at how true Jake's snark that Ash could sleep through an earthquake was.  He sounded a bit hysterical to his own ears so he supposed he shouldn't be surprised when Ash abruptly sat up and was looking at him with concerned brown eyes.

“Andy?”

“I need to pee, and you are not fucking biting me and making come right now, 'kay?”

That got him a startled look and a puzzled blink.

“Uh, okay.  Andy?”  Ash was moving to help Andy stay upright.  “Andy? Man you are dead fucking white.”

Andy giggled again at the concerned tone.

Then he tried to stand up and the room swam.

He distantly heard Ash's scream.

~0~

Jake jumped when he heard Ash scream.  Ash didn't scream for trivial reasons, and this absolutely was not his coming so hard it feels like my balls are turning inside out scream.

This was pure panic, well laced with absolute terror.

Sammy was gone.

He had been in the kitchen with Mikko, but the first scream hadn't even died and Sammy was flat _gone_.

Jake was only halfway up the stairs when he heard a yell in a language he didn't understand and Jason was barrelling past him with the bright orange tackle box he knew was their teams version of an 'oh shit' kit.

It was a very big and terrifyingly well stocked 'oh shit' kit.

When he got up to the room Ash and Andy had taken over he found Sammy perched on Ash's chest, his hands pinning Ash's wrists to the floor, talking to the clearly scared stupid vampire in creepily soft and calm tones.

Jason was checking Andy over and had murmured something to Julian that had the other man scooting for the steps to yell down for Theon and Vivian.

Jake blanched when he realized what must have happened.

Sammy was reassuring Ash that Andy wouldn't turn and that Jason could keep him stable until the bond began stimulating his system to make more red blood cells.

He felt CC's arms around him and blinked at the wondering tone in his lovers voice.

“Did he say bonded?”

“Yeah, he did.”  But then they both were listening as Sammy quietly explained the realities of the situation.  That Ash's second near death in a space of ten days had set his instincts into overdrive.  Andy was right there, and apparently was compatible to a degree that was rather frightening.  Sammy referenced his own bond with Mikko as a comparison.

Jake blinked back at CC and got a puzzled shrug in answer, he hadn't had any idea that vampires bonded based on compatibility, he'd thought it was just need and proximity with a side helping of lust or love.

Repeated feedings cemented a bond and Jake gulped.

Andy fed Ash pretty routinely, from the wrist.  The marks he could see on Andy's pale skin hinted that he'd been fed from at the major veins in the neck and groin.

Sammy listed out the convention; wrist for liking as a friend, groin was lust for a lover and throat was love for a partner.

Ash had fed three for three.

Jake gulped and looked back at Andy and immediately blanched and looked away again.

Theon was being bled into a bag that then drained directly into Andy, with Vivian hovering worried behind his mate.

Jake hated the sight of blood.

“Why Theon?”

Jake closed his eyes and listened to Jason's absent-minded answer.

“Blood types.  Both are human type A positive.  If this was a real screaming emergency I'd pull from Julian and Yu as well, they are both O Positive.  But it's better to not have to.”

“Why?” Jake kicked himself for the question.

“Yu is a Slayer, it has markers that could impact the bond since it's so new.  And I think why I wouldn't use the rest of us is pretty clear.”

CC shook his head.

“I don't get it.”

Jason looked up from where he was monitoring the two lines, from Theon and to Andy.

“You never got the explanation on why it's bad to mix kinds of blood?”

CC fidgeted and answered.

“I know why with human types you don't mix, it can kill you. But why couldn't Mikko or you be used?  I sorta get why Vivian can't.”

Jason snorted.

"Vampirism hasn;t been transmitted by transfusion, ever.  It takes intent to convert, and vampires don't have blood types in the traditional manner.  What they call common vampires isn't proper vampireism, it's amutation that most vampires consider a terrible disease.  That is contagious by bite and blood contact, tbut that's not the issue here.  Lycan and other changers have two blood types and some have RH factors and some don't.  Lycan do, but it's not quite the same as in humans.

He paused and looked over at Sammy where he had gotten Ash more or less calmed down.  Calm but still watching pale Andy's face with an expression of heartbroken loss that made Jake's gut flip over in sympathy.

“And for Mikko, Nephilium blood is so individual I'd rather not risk it.  Bad enough he fed Ash once.”

Andy whimpered as Jason pulled the needle out of Theon and carefully ran his fingers down the line to force as much of the blood as possible into the bag still feeding Andy drip by precious drop.

“Easy.  Mikko, ah you brought it.”

Jake watched as Mikko slid in beside Andy as Jason lifted the far to pale man up.

“Drink Andy.”

“Need, 't pee...”

The two exchanged a look.

“Bathroom.” Jason lifted Andy in his arms and moved him bodily, Ash let out a keening cry but Sammy refused to let him follow.

After a few minutes, that felt like an eternity, Jason had Andy back and settled him in the bed where Mikko could gently bully him into drinking whatever was in the mug.

Only after Andy had drained the mug did Sammy let Ash up to huddle by Andy's side.

“How long have you known.” The question was soft, but still in clear tones of annoyance.

Ash shrank down a bit.

“Um.”

“Ashley.”

Jake winced at that tone, and when CC squeaked and began tugging him out of the room he went.

He saw Sammy moving to carefully pin Andy to the bed just as their Prophet began the wind-up to a what Jake knew was going to be an epic shit fit.

Jinxx blinked at him and quietly settled to watch and, if needed, act as referee.

~0~

Andy was in a full fledged snit fit. 

It was a good thing he was still weakened from Ash's enthusiasm in bonding them together or he'd have been throwing things and Ash would have been ducking and trying to plead his case at the same time.

Jinxx snickered when he heard Mikko's comment about all they needed for a proper Klingon courting was poetry.

Ash hadn't heard him or Jinxx was sure there would have been a split second of utter confusion followed by Andy _finding_ something to throw, even if it was only a pillow.

As it was Ash was huddling into a little ball of miserable vampire by Andy's bedside.

Yeah, big bad vampire?  Not so much.  At least not when the bondmate was in a snit.

Andy ran out of breath and was lying there with his eyes closed when Sammy moved again.

Jinxx let out a strangled giggle when he saw the cuffs.  Nicely padded bondage cuffs were buckled and then locked to each man's left wrist then a long length of chain was used to lock the two together.

The big box of condoms and the industrial sized tube of lube looked to be more a joke than a real need but Jinxx didn't argue when the big vampire began firmly herding everyone out.

“You aren't just going to leave them are you?” He couldn't help asking even as a part of him was wincing at the curious look Yu and Kiro were giving him.

Jason answered as Sammy was quietly talking to the Summoner and his Slayer partner.

“I'll be checking twice a day and I think given how unhappy Ash was looking he'll let us know if Andy needs us before then.”

Jinxx blinked, but followed the older lycan back down the steps.

 _This_ could prove interesting.

~0~

CC snickered at some of what Mikko was sending up for Ash and Andy on their food trays.

Andy was not a fan of vegetables, and dark leafy greens were featured at least once a day.  CC knew why, he'd asked and gotten the full run down of _why_ Mikko was putting leafy greens on a plate for a man who hated them in principle.

And given the state of the plates coming back either Andy was starving enough to eat anything put in front of him or Ash was pulling the Jewish guilt cards.

But if it make Andy better faster CC wasn't going to complain, he might tease Andy later, but later was _later_ , when it was a fair fight.

Not that it sounded like Ash and Andy were wasting much time, not given the last time he'd walked by, slowly so he could listen in, he'd heard Ash moaning and begging for Andy to let him come.

Probably been getting a blow job from hell.  Ash would beg and moan like a porn star if he was getting blown right and couldn't direct or touch back.

CC had listened in long enough that Jake had come looking for him and he'd been wound up enough that Jake had gotten his jeans yanked down in the hallway.

They'd been a bit late to dinner, and Christian had waggled his eyebrows at them and made cracks about technique until CC had blushed.

Jake though had snarked back and returned the favor later, in the privacy of their borrowed room.

Then some Legate guy had turned up on the doorstep.

Sammy had been indignant and had sworn the bonding had been irregular but not counter to the Laws.

CC had heard the capital letter very clearly and gulped.

When Vivian had stepped up and quietly sworn himself as witness he realized that this bean counter jerkoff was here for Ash.

Ash had been indignant.

He would never willfully do harm to Andy.

That he'd almost bled him to a point he couldn't survive was dragged up and Ash looked stricken.

The jerk had told Andy to be silent when he'd stepped up to defend Ash.

Then things got weird, even by CC's standards.

Mikko had given the guy a _look_.

The Jerk had dismissed Mikko as a 'mere human' and gotten the surprise of his immortal life when Mikko had given him a sharp toothed smile and flared his wings protectively over Ash and Andy.

Sammy had just leaned against the kitchen counter with a mug of coffee in hand and watched with apparent amusement.

Apparently vampires didn't like demons very much as one of the Jerk's hanger's on threw some sort of prepared spell right at Mikko.

Luminor's 'oh dear' remark and everyone else hitting the floor only made sense a moment later when Mikko dropped into a stance that made CC thing football linebacker and shifted his wings protectively in front of him.

Whatever the spell was it _bounced_.

CC boggled as the ball of red gold light reflected off Mikko's black velvet bat wings and right back into the nitwit's teeth, blasting him backwards and off his feet.

He didn't go through the wall, but Christian made a cryptic comment about 'told you it would hold' and accepted some kind of money from two of his teammates who had chagrined looks on their faces.

Mikko just shook red gold sparkles off his wings and looked _very_ annoyed as he snarled something in a language CC didn't understand at the Jerk.

Whatever it was Jerk face blanched white, even for a vampire.  He demanded formal witnesses, which Vivian and Sammy instantly stepped forward for.

Some papers were brought out, fancy seals used and CC was left grimacing over all the flashy bits of light and hoo ha.  He really didn't see the point.

But the Jerk left.

And Ash looked rather shaken where he stood with his arms wrapped tightly around a very indignant Andy.

“What, the **_fuck_** , was that all about?”

“Bonded vampires are required by law, both Vampire and Human, to register a bond.” Sammy answered mildly as he went back to his mug and settled with it in hand.  Mikko cuddled into his side and let his bond mate stroke a loving hand over his wings in a gesture that appeared to calm both.

“Normally they aren't such shit heads. You have sixty days to formally file a bond charter.”  Vivian settled back on the arm of the chair Theon was sitting in.  “I have no idea what that was all about.”

There was a slanting of looks toward Mikko and a long silence before Jason offered up the question.

“How long have you been wanting to do that? The game face and wings thing?”

Mikko smiled wanly, but Sammy answered.

“Since we met his high fucky fuckness.”

Jinxx and Luminor both near missed fountaining their tea out their noses.

“He really was a dickhead wasn't he?” Observed Strify as he pounded on Luminor's shoulders to help him clear his lungs.

Jinxx suffered CC's enthusiastic help for a moment then started laughing.

“Oh, it gets better,” offered Theon with a grin than made CC take a step back.  “Because of the wards we have on this place El-dicko can't tell anyone Mikko's not as human as he looks.  Not him and not his trigger happy buddy.”

CC shared a look with Jake, carefully set aside his drink, and cracked up.

~0~

Jinxx settled in and carefully made sure he had all the numbers sorted out in his phone.  He had the number here, the land line for the shop Strify ran in Berlin, the land line for the apartment that was officially Yu's in L.A.  Christian and Sammy's respective houses outside of Tampere, a land line and a cell number for someone named Jussi in Helsinki.  Cell numbers for everyone here, and he'd had a bit of fun getting pictures to go with the phone numbers, and a few extra numbers as just in case contact points.  One of those was the Historian from Christian's birth pack and the Dream keeper from Luminor's tribe.

He'd been more than a bit mind boggled to find the man had ties to the Fae community.

Andy and Ash had all the numbers as well, and he suspected Jake and CC were getting them whether they realized it or not.

Mikko made sure he also had introductory letters if he needed them for another dozen or so practitioners back in the US.

Just in case, he said.  But his eyes had been resting on the chair CC and Jake were curled up in.

Jinxx had winced, but nodded his understanding.  Far to many would see CC as a dangerous threat, and not just a man who was making the best of his situation and trying to be a good man and friend.

He looked up at the sky and wondered what his Sammi would think of all this.  He hoped his wife would be able to accept things.  She'd accepted CC in spite of his heritage, so Jinxx thought she would accept a Nephilium as well.

He hoped so anyway.

He had a feeling that this was just the beginning.

 


	9. Just to Love You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ville learns why Jussi hates seeing his teams newest member out fighting.

Ville shivered a bit as he stepped in out of the ice cold wind.  He quickly shed his show covered coat and toed off his iced over boots.

With the rest of the guys recovering he’d been left at loose ends, at least until Jyrki called.  They’d teamed up to take out a clutch of feral joutani-nix.  They’d taken care of the nasty ice sprites but had taken a tremendous beating in the process.  Of his team he and Linde had come off the best.  Ville knew it was luck for him and Linde could thank his vampire nature.  Gas and Midge were holed up in their pack enclave with their wives and cubs to heal up from their beating.

Of the Eye’s team only Archzie had been beaten enough to need to head back into pack territory to recover.  Luna had gone with him, partly to keep him in line and partly to formally meet the rest of Archzie’s pack.

But Jyrki had called him to check in on Jussi.

Jussi who was either the luckiest of them all; or the one most damned.

Jussi was a hybrid.  One of three known to have been bred from a lycan bitch and a high line vampire.  One of three who could shape shift _and_ blood feed.

After a nasty fight he did one of two things: he turned into a hyper little demon spawn or he turned hermit.

Jyrki hated dealing with the after effects of the man he called his little brother and best friend after he went hermit.

Ville sighed.

The house was chill, but not frigid, so he went and nudged the thermostat until it began warming the place where a normal human wouldn’t feel like they were freezing to death slowly.  According to Jyrki’s intel from Luna the place was stocked for winter, so he poked about in the kitchen and smiled a bit and sent a mental thank you to the little adopted bitch that had made herself so useful to Jyrki’s team.

There was _good_ coffee in the freezer.

He started a pot going and went hunting the little hybrid.

Jussi hated being called little, hated being reminded that he was short.

To Ville Jussi’s compact body was an endless source of joy and pleasure.

Having a drummer as your sometimes lover had tremendous benefits.

Rhythm, stamina and remarkable aim just being the start of things.

He found Jussi curled in a tight little ball in his bed.

That alone told Ville Jussi had been having nightmares.  Normally he slept in a sprawl that would have one compact body taking over ninety percent of the king sized bed.  Even more telling the black hair Jussi normally kept spiked up like so many porcupine quills was limp.

Jussi spiked it back up first thing after a shower.  Him leaving it down was another red flag.

Ville heard the coffeemaker beep and went to fix two mugs of coffee.

In spite of how still Jussi was Ville had no doubts the man was awake, aware ad hoping he could outwait his visitor and go back to sulking in solitude.

~0~

I’d heard him come in.  Heard the rustle of frozen cloth coated in ice and snow being shed, the twin thump bounces of boots being shed.  I heard him moving around, knew it was a him and not a her as the only female to come in here was Luna and she’s off making Archzie rest so his ribs will heal up properly.

God, little Luna.  She shouldn’t still be with us, she should be safe with a pack of her own, not a bunch of misfit Hunters like us.

I hear the freezer door open and a soft and pleased ‘ah’ then the rattle and clink of the coffeemaker being prepped and the blurble as it starts to brew.

By then I don’t need him to come close enough that I can smell him.  I know its Ville and I quietly call Jyrki all kinds of nasty names.  Ville will figure out why I’m trying to play hermit and will drag me out, kicking and screaming if he feels he’s got to.

I heard his soft footsteps come close and stop.

My salvation is the beep of the coffee maker.  Temporary, but hey, I’ll take what I can get right now.

Except that I’m all twisted up and can’t escape my bedding.

And I can hear him coming back.

Ohhh shit.

~0~

Ville tried not to smile, he really did.  But seeing Jussi struggling to escape the twisted tangle of his own bedding was far too cute.

And someone hadn’t worn a stitch of clothing to bed.

Jussi blinked up through his hair and let out a little squeak and struggled harder as Ville set the two mugs on the bedside table.

This he could not pass up.

One cute little bottom poking up in the air was just too much temptation.

~0~

I squealed.

I couldn’t help it.

Ville’s hands were a bit cold, but that wasn’t why I squealed like a damn girl.

He’d grabbed my ass, spread the cheeks and _licked_.

After a soft hum and him rubbing his face over one buttock he licked again.

I’m honestly not sure which turned me on more, the little prickle of stubble on my butt or the fact he was rimming me.

Then he started probing deeper and I was glad the last thing I’d done before falling over was shower.

Then the bastard stopped.

God, I wanted to die of embarrassment, I’d been whimpering and shoving my ass up higher, just like a needy bitch.

I hear the zipper and can’t help squirming.

Please be doing what I think you are, please, please…

Oh _god_.

~0~

Ville hummed softly to himself and slicked his cock with the tiny dribble of lube left in the tube on Jussi’s table.

Jussi was squirming, and not to escape, and he’d be begging shortly if the needy whimpers were anything to go by.

He lined up, and pushed in with one long slow stroke.

Jussi screamed, and Ville would have thought he was hurting the smaller man.  But one; he was a hybrid of two very durable species and two he’s started shoving back as soon as he felt the tip of Ville’s cock start pushing in.

Then the little bastard started moaning, and Ville had pure hell not starting to thrust like a mad thing.  Jussi was tight, sweet hot and so tight and when he started with the porn star moans it was all Ville could do to not try and rape the smaller man.  That you couldn’t rape the willing really wasn’t the point.

“Harder, Ville, please…” The broken moan and plea broke his control.

He put all he had into each twisting thrust, knew he was leaving bruising hand prints on Jussi’s hip bones, knew Jussi would be sore and raw when he was done, knew he’d be begging to come as he forced the smaller man’s thighs tightly closed.

~0~

Oh god, the fucking bastard.

He’s using the sheets to tie my legs tight closed.

All I can do is writhe, struggle under him and beg for it.

I needed to come so bad.

And I was begging. Begging like a cheap whore and loving every brutal thrust.

Then I felt a hand worming into the bedding and was struggling _not_ to come yet.

It hurt so good having him fucking me so hard, but his hand was gentle on my dick, so I struggled, writhed under Ville and was sobbing, swearing, begging for it harder, begging to come.

Then it hit and all I could do was scream his name.

~0~

Ville felt Jussi clamp down, and shook his head to clear the ringing in his ears from the scream that had erupted out of the smaller man.  Then he gasped and was coming hard himself.

The sudden relaxation of his whole being had him gasping Jussi’s name and slumping over sideways to lie beside the smaller man.

~0~

Waking up was nice, he was warm and could take his time in waking up.

Ville blinked his eyes open when he felt his bedmate shift though.

“Jussi?”

“’m okay.”  He saw Jussi wriggle free of the tangle of bedding and reach for one of the mugs on the bedside table.  He took a sip, made a face, then slugged the rest.

“Cold?”

Jussi nodded and closed his eyes as he huddled back into a ball.

Ville moved and wrapped Jussi up in his arms.

“Okay, what’s nagging you,” he didn’t make it a question, more a hard prod for information.

The mumble wasn’t very informative.

“Jussi…”

“It’s Luna.”

Ville frowned.

“Jussi she’s a big bitch, she can take care of herself.”

 **That** got a reaction.  Jussi rounded on him with a fierce glare.

“She’s **_not_** ; we don’t even know for sure how _old_ she is. Bazie, he, he found her in an old slave harness.”

Ville felt a prickle of unease run up his spine as Jussi kept talking.

He hadn’t known _any_ of this.  His team all thought she was just a loner who’d just been taken in.  That she might be turning into a proper lycan mate to Archzie as his human wife was in the process of bailing out on him.

Sterile she’d never be fully accepted even if that was Archzie’s intent.  Fertile females would always being offering, luring.  That she’d been being beaten when Baize found her, locked up in a slave harness for so long she still had bald spots in her fur…

Ville shuddered as Jussi’s words ran out and he just wrapped his arms tight around the smaller man.

“She made it through Jussi; she’s a fighter, just like you are.”

He knew it wasn’t going to magically fix things.  Lycan males were too hardwired to protect their females for that to have _any_ chance _at all_ of working.

They both jumped when Jussi’s phone went off.

Ville had longer arms and grabbed it first.

It was a text.

Ville quickly amended that to _texts_ , as the phone chimed again.

#Ville, tell him to stop.#

“How in fuck does she even know you’re here?”

“Jyrki called me.”

Jussi snorted.

“I figured that.  Oh geeze…”

Ville read the second text and laughed.

#He’s making A fidgety.  Healer will NOT allow him to leave yet.#

“She’s gotta be Jewish.”

“She is doing guilt like a Jewish Grandma,” agreed Ville with considerable amusement.  Then he groaned.

#Jason says hi.  Sammy says Mikko has surprise for you later and if American called Andy calls he sent him.”

They shared a look.

“What the fuck have those idiots gotten into now?”

“They were after a kiss of common vamplings weren’t they?” asked Jussi as he frowned at the cryptic text.

Ville made a noise of agreement as he opened the picture that Luna had sent with her text.

“Oh, my.  Little Kiss impersonators.”

Jussi poked him and waggled an eyebrow.

“Oh shush.”

Jussi laughed; a sound Ville was glad to hear.

“How much trouble did they get into hunting down a bunch of common vampires?”

Jussi grinned at him.

“I dunno.  How much trouble did you get into tracking down a vampire lycan hybrid?”

Ville sighed.

“Excellent point darling.”

~0~

Okay, so with Luna pulling long distance Jewish guilt on me and Ville naked in my bed I can’t hang onto my sulks

But now I’m curious as hell.  Not just for what kind of messes the Lovex team got into, but for why Jyrki called Ville.

“So… what did my darling vampire boss tell you to do when you go there anyway?”

The smile I get makes my insides flip over and my heart squeeze.  The way he strokes my hair out of my eyes makes me gulp.

“Just to love you Kulta, just to love you.”

Then he smiles and leans in and steals my breath away.


	10. Advent (Ears series)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Six months after bonding Ash and Andy take the team for some down time with Ash's tribe.

~0~ Ears: Day 1 ~0~

 

Ash cracked up. Jake flailing like a lunatic and still landing hard on his ass in the snow was priceless.  Even better CC skidded and landed face to crotch with Jake hurrying to try and help.  Jake grabbed CC by the knitted ears of his hat and dragged him further up to kiss him stupid to still the worried babble.

Ash wiped his eyes and quietly thanked his grandmother for the warm woolen mitts and caps she'd all but forced on all of them, they might look a touch silly but they were warm.

That and he knew the fans would be dying at the sight of Andy with little pointed black ears sticking up.

 

~0~  Hearts and Laughter: Day 2 ~0~

 

Andy snickered, and then cracked up when Jake slid, flailed and then landed on his butt.  CC of course about killed himself trying to make sure his partner in crime was okay.  The floppy dog ears on his hat flapped as he ran skidded and fell face first into Jake's lap.

When Jake grabbed those floppy ears to haul CC up to kiss him quiet Andy was quietly grateful that it was just the band and family around, with no video cameras handy.

No point in breaking little fan girl’s hearts if he could help it.

 

~0~ Hats: Day 3 ~0~

 

Jinxx chortled a bit at Jake and CC, but he was having better luck navigating the frozen lake than his friends.  He had shifted to wolf shape and had four paws to help and a heavy coat of fur to help keep the cold wind out.

But he liked Ash’s grandmother's sense of humor.  CC really was a big puppy, Andy was a cat and Jake was just a goofball.

Now they had the hats to prove it.  CC's had floppy puppy ears, Andy's sharp black kitty ears and Jakes had googly eyes and buck toothed fangs.

He'd been surprised by her insight when the hat she'd presented him was brindled grays with furry wolf ears

He just wondered why Ash's was russet with fox ears.

 

 

~0~ Oops; Day 4 ~0~

 

Andy could only watch Jake and CC suck face for so long before got tired of the cutes.  When the two looked to be squirreling hands up under layers he started packing snowballs and once he had a neat stack began lobbing them, hard, at the lovebirds.

That he'd managed to plant one right where it slid down the back of CC's neck was chance, a bonus but pure accident.

The shriek out of CC made him grin.

When he saw the look in Jake’s eyes though he ran like hell as best he could and hoped he didn't slip.  A snow covered frozen lake wasn't the best for traction.

So he slipped, at full sprint and slid on one hip right for Jinxx, who yelped and scrambled as fast as his paws would go but still didn't get out of the way fast enough.

Andy was still laughing when Jinxx shifted back and shoved at his shoulders playfully.  But when Jinxx's eyes went round he turned and squeaked.

The meditation tricks must be working for CC, because there was a **wall** of snow arcing beautifully over them.

He ducked as the snow came crashing down.

 

 

~0~ Epiphany: Day 5 ~0~

 

Ash whooped when he saw Andy land a perfect shot on the nape of CC's neck and watched the drummer shriek and all but levitate off Jake.

His laughter froze in his throat when he saw the glare on Jake's face as Andy fled, slipped on the ice and skidded right for Jinxx.

Even on four paws there were some things he couldn't escape.  When he shifted back to human he was laughing.

At least until he saw how well Kiro and Mikko's help had changed CC's control.

With Jake's help CC had swept the lake clean of snow and was sending it in a perfect arcing wave over Andy.

That was a **lot** of snow.

Ash went running as soon as the snow settled.

Thank the ancestors it wasn't piled so deep that he couldn't see where Jinxx and Andy had been.  He scrambled up the pile and began digging as fast as he could.  CC didn't come from snow country; he didn't understand how dangerous a snow slide could be.

Jinxx erupted out from the pile in his wolf shape and shook hard to try and clear the snow from his fur.

Ash half lunged down the hole Jinxx's exit left and gabbed Andy's jacket and yanked.

The yelp he got was reassuring; Andy was where he could breathe at least.

He yanked again, and felt extra hands helping.

Jinxx had shifted back, and Ash winced, so many quick changes would have Jinxx as hyper as his sister’s five year old son on to much sugar for hours if he couldn't get a good hard run in.  He felt Jake's blocky form on his right and could see CC's long arms reaching down as well.  With all of them working together they had Andy back out in the sun again within a few moments.

CC was starting to babble out an apology when Andy let out a whoop and hugged the drummer so hard he squeaked.

“That was **fucking _AWESOME_**.”

Ash blinked and shared a puzzled look with Jake, who shrugged back.

“B, but..”  CC tried to apologize again.

Andy gestured to the pristine ice of the lake.

“Dude!  _Look_ at what you did!  _Just_ the snow!”

Ash blinked when he realized what Andy had seen.  None of the others out on the lake had been disturbed; the men ice fishing looked puzzled but all were unharmed.  He sat back in the snow with a little thump and stared in awe at their Destroyer.  Then began to laugh, the only bits of snow left on the lake were his footprints and where Jake had lain.

Andy hugged CC again and swept the man off his feet spinning them crazily for a few steps before Andy fell on his ass laughing.

“Just the snow!  Nobody got hurt!”

CC realized what Andy was getting at and pounced on Jake babbling in shocked joy.

He'd used his powers; and no one had been hurt.

That was a gift he'd never expected, and it left Ash smiling with bemused joy.

 

 

~0~ Ruminations: Day 6 ~0~

 

CC curled up in front of the fireplace.  Ash's grandma made the best hot chocolate, and with a mug of that thawing his hands out and Jake a warm and comforting bulk behind his back he felt able to relax and really think about what had happened earlier out on the lake.

He'd called on his powers, and no one had been hurt.

Well, Andy and Jinxx could have been, if Ash hadn't realized what had happened and gone bolting for where they were buried and begun digging them out.

Thank god for vampire strength.  CC had tried digging at the snow and realized with a sick lurch that it had settled and was rock hard to his hands.  Simple snow, light, fluffy, harmless.  Deadly after a slide, something he hadn’t known.

He'd never do _that_ again unless he intended his targets to be hurt or even killed.

Andy had been so thrilled though.  He'd crowed with glee at the fact that CC had swept up the snow, and _only_ the snow and thrown it at him.

CC deliberately didn't think about the last time he'd used his powers before that.  He and Ash had nearly died.

“Quit.”

“Hunh?”

Jake chuckled in his ear.

“You're thinking depressing shit, quit.  We're all here, we're all safe and you are doing great.”  A nip of teeth on his earlobe made CC smile.

“Yeah?”

“It's almost Christmas, so quit worry-warting.  That's Ash's job anyway.”

CC laughed at Jakes next comment.

“He does it better anyway.”

 

 

~0~ Secret Places: Day 7 ~0~

 

Ash had fond memories of his grandmother's house.  It wasn't like the places Jake, CC and Andy had grown up in, nice though those homes were.  This place had started out small, a three room place built by his great grandfather.  Downstairs had been kitchen and work area and upstairs a place to sleep. 

But it had been added to as the family had grown, and added to again.  And again, almost constantly after World War II.  Now the place was a sprawling ramshackle maze that if you didn't know it well could trip you up with changes in the floors you walked across.

He knew it inside and out.  He knew all the little hidden places that constant renovations had left even if he had grown too big to fit into some of them now.  Those little spaces now were havens to his nephews and younger cousins.

But one place he could still get to, a small three sided room between the roof of the old original house and the outside wall.  It took a fair bit of work to get into.  As a child he'd found it and brought a beaten old guitar in so he could practice without his sisters driving him crazy.  In winter he'd lined it with blankets and quilts snitched from the rag bin.  Only now did he look back and laugh at how naive his child self had been, his grandmother had known all along what he was doing.

Andy loved it when he'd shown him.

He poked his head up into the room and had to smile.

Andy was curled up asleep in a nest of old blankets, is notebook under a lax hand and a pen fallen not far from limp fingers.  Andy usually built a fort of sorts in the living room of their place, but with so many people here that wasn't an option.  He was just glad his secret places were serving the singer as well as they had served him as a child.

 

 

~0~ Food Theory: Day 8 ~0~

 

CC blinked in shock when he saw a familiar head of straight blond hair in the kitchen of Ash's grandma's place.  Right beside Ash's grandma, chattering away in the language that he'd learned was Ash's _real_ birth tongue.

Then the blond turned and CC found himself getting hugged hard.

“CC.  Ash told me about sweeping the lake clear.  Good job!”

He managed a wobbly sort of smile for the shorter man, but they'd learned a fair bit of mutual respect in the weeks after their respective teams had met up to deal with a rogue vampire nest.  He'd had to learn to trust the little Nephilium; he was one of two people helping him get a proper handle on his powers. 

Not that Jake wasn't also helping, but according to Mikko, as a Mourner Jake's talents were better aimed at protection and picking up the mess after he went ca-boom.  He was less able to help keep him from going ca-boom in the first place.

Listening to Mikko and Kiro debate the theory that simply _having_ a Mourner attached to him made him less dangerous made his head spin.  That some Destroyers might be lethally dangerous because they **didn't** have a Mourner attached to them.  Either by death or not being born yet, distance didn’t seem to be an issue.  But after the death of a Destroyer _all_ Mourner’s seemed to react.  Kiro had access to all sorts of statistics, including the ‘euthanasia’ of Destroyers.  The dates of the deaths matched up with creepy synchronicity with days Jake had been down, crabby or just plain mean.

When Luminor, Strify, Julian and Jason jumped in the debate had made his head really hurt.  It was so much _theory_.  He _sucked_ at theory.

Thankfully Mikko didn't seem to be inclined to harp on theory today.

Even better he was sharing recipes with Ash's grandma.  One thing he loved about being here for their Christmas break was all treats he was getting to sample.

Jake would have a heart failure if her knew, but there was something so wonderful about being able to sample cookie dough right from the bowl, lick icing from the spoon and get mugs full of hot chocolate right from the pot complete with stolen fingerfulls of whipped cream.

He was 'helping' by sampling a mug for the new batch when Jake found him.

The sigh was speaking, as was the look, but Jake didn't fuss at him.  He just wrapped an arm around his shoulders and wiped a bit of whipped cream off his nose.

 

 

~0~ Cookies: Day 9 ~0~

 

Jake sighed when he saw CC bopping around the kitchen; he hated feeling paranoid about his lovers’ health, but in the past people had tried to poison his Destroyer.

Here at least that was less of a problem, Ash's grandma had taken a long look at them and decided they were under her protection.  He wished he knew what she'd seen, but was settling into being content to enjoy not having to check and double check every single thing the band ate, drank or handled for now.

Seeing Mikko in the kitchen helped.  Mikko's opinion of the modern habit of 'discover Destroyer, kill Destroyer' was pithy and to the point.

But then Jake had been one of the very few to see Mikko's unvarnished reaction to the televised reports on a nine year old Destroyer's so called euthanasia.

He'd raged at the TV for several minutes, and then broken down in tears in his bond mates arms.  Jake had been unsettled all morning and wasn't sure if he should be happy that he now knew why.  He'd gone back to the room he was sharing with Kiro, Yu and CC and curled up in the bed with CC and refused to deal with the outside world for a while.

CC had been happy enough to just cuddle in close, well, other than when Jake hadn't let him lose so he could go pee.

Sammy had made sure they had food and drinks, and had been kind enough to just leave things on a tray outside the door.  He’d just rapped on the door to let them know it was there and left them alone.

Kiro and Yu had found somewhere else to sleep for a night, buy the next morning Jake had been able to cope.  He might not have been coping well, or happily, but he was coping.  And from the red rimmed eyes Mikko had turned on his the following morning the Nephilium hadn't been much happier with things.

CC had taken advantage of that and had begged Mikko to teach him his double chocolate pancake recipe.

That had kept Jake thoroughly distracted.

He smiled a bit at the memory, and shook his head at CC with his nose covered in whipped cream.  A quick taste confirmed it was completely safe, and told him that it had been made with fresh cream and beaten only a little while ago.  A stolen sip of the cocoa under the cream and he knew that Mikko had come bearing gifts.  He'd never been able to figure out where the Mexican chocolate Mikko used came from.  The stuff on store shelves was sweeter and had less cinnamon and vanilla in it.  This stuff was sweetened by turbinado sugar in the cream, and he knew if he wasn't careful they'd all get addicted to it.

Jake also knew if they weren't careful none of them would be getting back in their skinny jeans without a fight.  Breakfast had been fruit pancakes, eggs and more bacon than all five of them could eat, even with the help of Ash's cousin's, not that they didn't try.

Jinxx had pronounced Ash's grandma a kitchen goddess after their first breakfast, and then had waddled, **_waddled_** , off to sleep it off in front of the fireplace.  The quality of the food had not dropped.

“Here, try this.”

Jake blinked, but accepted the still rather warm cookie Mikko offered.

A bite told him it was a sugar cookie, rich and sweet and laden with vanilla icing and sweet blue sugar sprinkles.

When his eyes opened again he blinked again.  CC's warm brown eyes were right there, laughing at him.

“What?”

“You just had a food orgasm from a cookie.”

Jake huffed and scowled before all but shoving the now lopsided star cookie under CC's nose.

“So you try it.”

“Okay,” chirped CC, then he grabbed Jake's ears and swooped in to kiss him.

Jake forgot all about cookies for a while.

 

 

~0~ Cookies and Lovers: Day 10 ~0~

 

Ash snickered when CC decided to 'sample' a bit of sugar cookie by kissing Jake silly.  But he had to smile at how Mikko had made sure to reassure the Mourner that he wasn't trying to poison his lover.

Watching Jake have a little food orgasm was priceless, but he was rather partial to his grandmother's double vanilla sugar cookies.

Long arms wrapped around his shoulders and Ash closed his eyes and leaned back into the warm lean body of his bond mate.

That was going to take getting used to.

Not that he was about to complain about being able to wake up in the morning with his face smushed into Andy's throat.

He was learning that Jinxx was a firm believer in paybacks though, and had seen several shots of him and Andy being 'insufferably cute' tacked up on the bus bulletin board.

Ash had grimaced and had a nice cathartic yell about that, at least until he'd been reminded that as a vampire there were a few laws he had to follow regarding bonding. Including that he had to report and publicly register the bond.

At least Vivian and Sammy had stood as formal witnesses to the vampire council that he hadn't raped Andy.  Andy's outraged yelling on the subject didn't count, and **that** provoked even more explosive verbal outbursts.

He expected a song out of it at some point.

The formal notice had provoked some interesting reactions in their fans.  Surprisingly few negative reactions, almost none of the expected homophobic freaking out he'd half expected.  Andy's girlfriend at the time had called, after Andy had tried calling her several times and left several voice mails.

Ash agreed with his desire to tell her himself.  She deserved that much at least.

On the good side, they'd finally gotten in contact.

On the bad side she'd been calling from the airport and Ash had been half terrified when he'd gone to get her.

He'd snuck out and left Andy asleep.

They'd had the chance to have a heart to heart chat as Andy's former lover to his current lover and come out of it surprisingly well.

Something to be said for Andy refusing to date a girl who wasn't already a good friend.

She'd gotten Andy's voice mail and booked a flight, then had several of her girlfriends let her in on Andy's 'infidelity' and had to cope with learning some of her friends really weren't.  It had been eye opening to say the very least.  On the good side she now knew her best friend really was her best friend, and that Andy did still love her dearly.

She'd joined Jinxx and Jake with taking 'cute', aka mortally embarrassing, pictures, at least until she'd flown home.

“You need to check the fan forum.”

Ash felt his eyes go round at the undertone of amusement out of Andy.

“Um, wh _~hy_?”  He suddenly had a very bad feeling about this.  The sudden surge of amusement down their fledgling bond only deepened his unease. 

“Because,” a nibble at one ear made Ash shiver.  “You worry too much.”

Ash gulped and watched as Andy sauntered, there was no other word for it, over to where the cookies were coming out to help himself to a few.  Then he bolted for his laptop.

~0~

Andy grinned when Ash bolted for his laptop.

The picture this time wasn't too bad, just them curled up asleep on the couch.  Ash had buried his face in Andy's throat and both of them were clearly mostly dressed, even if no-one could tell Ash had been in his Cthulu-kitty sweatshirt.

If whoever had taken the shot had waited a few minutes they'd have gotten a good shot of Ash having a bit of a nibble and Andy fisting soft black hair in his hands holding his vampire in place.

A few minutes after that and they both were running for Ash's room as Ash's grandma had threatened them with ice water if they didn't take their shenanigans someplace private.

The high pitched yelp and burst of shock had Andy trotting over to see what had Ash so riled.

He dropped his cookie on the floor when he saw the latest picture of them, clearly naked around a clever cropping job and Ash was having quite a bit more than a nip.

They shared a look, gulped and Andy read over Ash's shoulder as he scrolled down the comments.

Then Ash scrolled back up.

They shared a look, and then yelled.

**“JINXX!”**

~0~ Caught! : Day 11 ~0~

 

Jinxx heard Ash and Andy yell and chortled.

They must have found his latest picture post to the fan forum.

He knew his Sammi had seen it, she'd commented on the cute, and the hot, already.

Gods but the loved his wife.

But he needed to run, he was about to get flattened by a cranky vampire and his less than amused mate.

He changed and hauled ass as fast as four paws would carry him.

Or tried to anyway.

One black Pomeranian with a mouth full of cookie tripped him in the hallway and a breath later and he had said cranky vampire rolling him on his back, straddling him and snarling right in his face.

Werewolf mojo, yeah, not so much.

He changed back and let out a yelp as Ash bounced on his diaphragm.

Jinxx couldn't even get a full breath to defend himself.

Andy even looked a touch annoyed.

“Why?”

Jinxx winced at the pointed tone of the single word.

“Sammi suggested showing, guff! _Ash_!” Jinxx squirmed and tried to get Ash's solid body off his gut.

“Sammi suggested?  What?”  Ash sounded really annoyed.

“Suggested pics to show, the, uff, fangirls how, ugh, things really are.” Jinxx let out another grunt as Ash bounced on his gut.  “Keep it up, unh, and I'll hurl, waaaulk.” 

Ash stood and with a practiced yank had Jinxx laid out over his shoulders.  And Jinxx held very still.  If he squirmed he'd fall, and the floor here was a mix of wood and stone, not fun to land on.

The soft 'humm' out of Andy told him at least one of them was thinking, but he was staying very still as Ash moved.

 “He does have a point.”

Ash growled, “I don't think pictures of us fucking are what Sammi meant.”

Jinxx let out a squeak as Andy opened the door and ice cold wind cut right through his shirts.

“No, probably not,” agreed Andy.  “But you have to admit it does get the point across.”

Jinxx screamed as Ash dumped him ass first in a deep snowdrift.

Ash half glared up at Andy.

“I refuse to let our brothers plaster naked pictures of us all over the internet for the edification of underage girls.”

Jinxx shivered and cautiously crawled out of the drift and crept toward the door.

“They weren't all underage.”

“Not the point.  Where do **you** think you are going?”

Jinxx squealed as Ash shoved snow up under his shirts and down the back of his jeans.

 

 

~0~ Trees and Mothers Day 12 ~0~

 

Decorating the tree was something of a production in the extended Purdy household.

Ash had been put to work finding the boxes the ornaments had been stored away in.  Andy hadn't been allowed to help search for them when Ash learned they weren't where they were supposed to be.  Ash's grandmother was no fool, and knew darn good and well that if she left her grandson alone with his newly bonded mate the only thing that would get done was a lot of cannodleing and no real work. So she'd put Andy to work helping string up the garland that **had** been where it belonged, citing his extra inches as a good reason for him to help with the task.

CC had giggled at Andy and been put to work helping.

Jinxx and Jake had been put to work helping find, cut and haul an appropriate tree.  But they'd had help in Mikko's bond mate, and the tall Finn had accepted being ordered around by a little old lady who was no relation of his so calmly that they felt they had to behave and go along with things as well.

Mikko had elected to go with them.

Jake gaped up at the Nephilium.

“His wings don't get cold flying like that?”

“No, he's spent the past few winters flying in Tampere.  This isn't quite as cold.”

Jake shuddered, it was plenty cold for him. Then he stopped and really looked at the big blond vampire.  He was wrapped in a warm coat just like he and Jinxx were, but had a head scarf on under his hat and appeared to be comfortable, not freezing his ass off like Jake felt.

 Mild blue eyes peered back at him from behind spectacles Jake knew were just tinted window glass, and a pieced eyebrow quirked up in silent question.

“How do you cope?”

“Ah?  With?”

“Knowing some asshole demon hunter might try and kill him.”

“Ahh,” Sammy looked up at where his lover was circling above them.  “Mostly I don't think about it much.  He's had fewer Hunters come after him than **I** have since my conversion.  His camouflage if very good when he uses it.”

Jake grimaced.  His team getting munched on by demon infested ghouls was why anyone other than Sammy knew Mikko wasn't as human as he could appear.

A big warm hand rested on his shoulder, and Jake stopped and looked up into warm blue eyes.

“We knew it was coming, a time he couldn't hide anymore.  We knew. It wasn't your fault.”

Jinxx stopped and looked back at them.

“Doesn't mean we don't wonder, you know, if we made a mess of things for you and your team.”

“Yu suspected, had suspected for a while.  And what Yu thinks about...”

"Kiro knows about," Jake and Jinxx chorused.  They'd seen how the Summoner amd Slayer worked as a team, both as lovers and as partners on thier extermination team.

“How does Strify not murder Kiro anyway?” continued Jinxx.

Sammy smlied.

“Years and years of practice.  They've known each other since they were barely more than children.”

“It doesn't bother you though?” Jake swallowed and continued when he saw Sammy's questioning look.  “That some idiot could take him away from you?”

This time he got both Sammy's hands resting on his shoulders.

“Every day we have is a gift.  I love him, even if we don't always agree, I love him. If a Hunter, or a _truck_ , takes either of us out I'll die knowing I love him and he loves me.”

“It's not like either of us would outlive the other by very long anyway.”

Jake squeaked at Mikko's voice.  He hadn't heard the Nephilium land; his reaction got him a wry if slightly sad smile.

“I think you're rather in the same boat if you think about it.  But we try not to.  It gets in the way of living.”

Jake grimaced and looked away when he saw the smile the pair exchanged.

Jinxx just rolled his eyes at him.

“Why are you asking?”

Jake floundered, mumbling about CC and family and a dozen other unrelated topics.

'You're scared of what your family will think?”

Jake winced, just like Jinxx to be perceptive.

“You're brother likes CC and your Mom adores him.”

“But they don't **_know_**.”

Sammy let out a soft snort, and then grinned at Jinxx’s echo of that snort and his words.

“About you being lovers?  Or about the Destroyer?”

Jake gulped.

Jinxx snorted again.

“Sorry bro, your Mom knows, on both counts.”

Jake squeaked and stopped dead in his tracks, letting the others get a little ahead of him.  His mother **_knew_**?

Jinxx slogged back to his side and grabbed his arm.

“She knows, now quit freaking out.  We still have a tree to find.”

 

 

~0~ Garland: Day 13 ~0~

 

Ash finally found the ornament boxes and dragged the last one downstairs with a huff of triumph.  Andy was draped with garland and looking more than a bit bemused by things, but CC was giggling and having fun swagging garland over every door and window.

The dogs and the cat where 'helping' which added to the confusion.  Add in his five year old nephew who was supposed to be handing CC tacks and was more interested in playing tag with the animals.

Bedlam was a mild way of putting it.

At least it was a happy bedlam, but Ash wanted his lover back for a minute.

Andy smiled at him and mouthed 'help?' when he was half strangled by CC pulling another loop of garland off.

Ash moved up and carefully untangled Andy.

“You have dust on your nose.”

“And in my hair, I know.”  Ash grinned up at Andy and paid no attention to what his nephew was doing.  He was more interested in collecting a kiss.

“Ewwwy, gross!”

Ash snickered down at his nephew and tried to take a step back.

Tried.

While he'd been distracted the child had managed to tie him and Andy together with several wraps of sparkly garland.

Worse someone had a camera and the flash blinded Andy as he also tried to move back.

A yelp and both of them were landing hard on the floor, still tangled up in garland.

CC cackling like a lunatic and a chill draft from the door told him they had more than one or two adult witnesses.

“Wow Ash, I knew you had a thing for being tied up, but this is out there even for you,” teased Jinxx.

Ash groaned and thumped his head off the floor.

“If it would help,” came Sammy's voice, “I did bring handcuffs.”

Ash couldn't stop the splutter, even as Andy cracked up in his arms.

He didn't know how yet, but he was so getting even for this.

 

 

~0~ Star: Day 14 ~0~

 

Jake wanted to die laughing when they got back and found Ash and Andy tangled up on the floor tied together by what looked like miles of tinsel and garland.

CC was already cracking up, Sammy's mild offer of more traditional restraints had Ash blushing for a change and that made CC and Jinxx laugh harder.

It was so hard to fluster the bass player that when it happened they all took ruthless advantage of it.

Jake did wonder how much of the flush to Ash's face was due to their teasing and how much was due to whatever Andy was whispering in his ear.

The low whine Ash let out gave him his answer.

“Help me up and I'll show _you_ Lone Ranger.”

Jake swallowed hard on more laughter and with help from Sammy and CC they got Andy and Ash back upright and untangled.

The instant they were free Ash had Andy over his shoulder and was moving with purpose toward their room.

There was a soft cough, and all of them were turning and blushing when they saw Ash's grandma.

“I see that we'll be using CC to put the star up this year.”

 

 

~0~ Lights: Day 15 ~0~

 

Jinxx curled up in a corner of the couch and looked up at the tree.

He'd already taken a picture of it and sent it to his Sammi.  She'd responded by sending back a picture of their twins dead asleep in a pile of garland.

He'd smiled and sent her the story of Ash and Andy getting tied up in garland and was now waiting on either her reply or an actual call.

His eyes fell on another Sammy and he had to smile. The other vampire had proved to be a wealth of information after Ash had gone feral and claimed Andy as his.  From the known hows and whys of vampire bonding, to helping keep Ash calm when he came back to himself and realized he'd overdone his feedings on his Chosen.

His version of keeping his fellow vampire calm was to sit on him and talk in calm and reasonable tones while his pack brother Jason had set about figuring out if they had a compatible donor (they had, and Jinxx could forgive Theon for being a chronic flirt because of his willingness to bleed for a man who wasn't his mate) and transfusing blood into the weakened man.

Then Sammy had sat, more carefully, on Andy as their weakened Prophet had a nice cathartic shout at their vampire for being a fucking idiot.

Only when Andy had stopped yelling and Ash was huddled beside the man's bedside did Sammy break out the restraints and tie the two together with padded bondage cuffs with about six feet of chain between them.  Then he'd grinned at them, left a box of condoms and a big tube of lube on the bedside table and shooed everyone else out.

Jinxx still didn't know for sure what had happened after that.

Oh, he’d heard the thumps, screams and moans and he knew Jason had checked on Andy twice a day every day for the next six, which was the point Andy had tartly remarked he wasn't made of glass thank you very fucking much.  By that point he was no longer as deathly pale and Ash was acting more like himself.

He was more protective of Andy than before, and had amused Vivian to no end by growling at him any time he flashed his flirty little boy grin at Andy.

Like Viv would do anything, or anyone, without his mate.

Jinxx's eyes drifted over to where their Prophet and his Deviant were curled up together in a chair sharing a large mug of cocoa.

And they said he and his Sammi were sickeningly cute.

He smiled and stared contentedly up at the lights glimmering on the tree.

 

 

~0~ Chocolate Oranges: Day 16 ~0~

The loud thump made Jake jump and yelp.

He knew CC hated wrapping presents at the best of times, but had thought Ash's Aunt would be competent help.  So he was somewhat surprised when the redoubtable lady in question suddenly cracked up.

Jake gulped and cautiously peered around the corner at where his lover and Ash's Aunt were curled up in a rats nest of brightly colored paper, ribbons and bits of sticky tape.

He had to slap a hand over his mouth to keep from cracking up at the sight of his CC with gold curly ribbon streamers tangled in his hair.

Then he saw CC taking an orange foil wrapped ball, and with instructions to 'whack this one good’; smack it hard into the floor.

Curiosity had him creeping closer as CC unwrapped whatever it was.  Given it looked like factory packaging, and Ash's family had proved to be very protective of his Destroyer, he felt marginally okay with CC taking a dark bit of whatever it was and popping it into his mouth.

“You quit lurking baby doll.  Come in here proper.”

Jake froze, gulped and meekly obeyed the order.

So much for being sneaky.

CC just grinned at him and offered the partly unwrapped ball.  Jake had to grin in a mix of affection and relief as he took a bit of the contents.

It was a chocolate orange.

 

 

~0~ Snowmobile: Day 17 ~0~

 

Ash grinned back at Andy and whooped with delight when the singer spun the snowmobile out and showered him in snow.

Officially they were out looking for Mistletoe and Holly for the mantle and over the doors.  Unofficially they were being chased out to have a bit of private time without small children, curious animals and nosy band mates underfoot.

The cold would keep them from getting into too much mischief, and Ash knew if they were gone more than three hours his Uncles would be coming out looking for them.  But that was just good sense in this weather, Ash had made sure to let everyone know their general direction before he set out, and checked on the status of a couple old cabins out this direction, just in case the weather decided to turn nasty.

But the radar picture had been pristine for miles and miles in all directions, so he wasn't terribly concerned.

And watching Andy learning how a snowmobile worked was fun.

So he was more interested in the way that flushed face was grinning and they way those blue eyes were lighting up, that was his business, everyone else could fuck off.

 

 

~0~ Mistletoe: Day 18 ~0~

 

Andy was having fun.  He'd already dusted Ash with a liberal coating of snow and had figured out the handling on this mechanical beast well enough that he wasn't afraid of accidentally killing himself.

Ash grinned at him and waved as he headed off in the direction he thought he remembered there being Holly and Mistletoe growing.

After another donut just for the fun of it Andy followed.

The woods here were all planted by man, at least to start with, so Andy felt a little odd following Ash down the valley with its big trees set at what once had been a regular interval.

The only green was Cedar and pine, everything else seemed dried up and gray.  But when Ash stopped Andy took a long second look.

Yes, things were gray, but it was a thousand shades, silver gray on the slender trees Ash said were birch, a more green gray of old man's beard hanging from bare branches.  The snow had blue gray shadows; darkening the deeper the shadows went.

Ash yelped and there was a loud crash that had Andy off his borrowed snowmobile and darting toward the noise.

He found Ash tangled up in a bright green shrub yelping and swearing.

“Ash?”

Ash stopped flailing and shot him an exasperated look.

“Be useful, hold this.”

Andy blinked and took what looked like half a shrubbery with leathery oval leaves and white berries.

“Um, is this the toxic kissing shrub your Aunt wanted?”

Ash growled and began to carefully extricate himself from the other shrub; one Andy winced at when he saw how pointy its glossy green leaves were.

“Well,” Ash muttered as he finally escaped. “At least I found what we were after.”

“Did you have to _land_ in the sharp one?”

Ash stopped, looked up at Andy and suddenly was on his ass in the snow cracking up.

“Ash?”

Ash just grinned at him as he rose and stalked over.

Andy felt his eyes go round.

“Uh, Ash?  Ashley?”

“It occurs to me,” Ash started in a far too serious tone for the spark of laughter lighting his brown eyes. “That we are seriously neglecting a tradition.”

Andy gulped and took a cautious step backwards.

“Uh, okay?”

Andy squealed when Ash pounced.  It was seriously unfair when he decided to use his vampire speed.

“Look up babe.”

Andy looked up, and saw more of the same sort of plant that Ash had handed him.

“Toxic kissing bush?”

Ash grinned.

“Yep.”

They were still busy kissing when Ash's uncles came looking for them.

 

 

~0~ Holly Surprise: Day 19 ~0~

 

Jinxx wasn't surprised to hear that Ash and Andy had gotten so caught up in making out that they'd lost track of time.  He'd been profoundly amused though to learn that Ash's uncle John had found them curled up under a holly bush kissing like the world was going to end.

At least they'd found what they'd been sent after _before_ getting distracted by each other.  But once they'd been dragged back, ordered into separate showers and given a good and mortifying look over by Ash's grandma Jinxx found himself somewhat glad they'd been hauled back.

Ash had been an idiot and gotten himself stuck several times by Holly.

According to Andy he'd gone up a tree after Mistletoe and fallen out, his fall being broken by a large Holly bush.

Good in that the idiot hadn't broken anything serious.

Bad in that Holly wasn't known to be nice to vampires.  Sammy in particular he'd seen handling the Holly brought back with extreme care.

It wasn't like Whitetorn, where wounds caused by it didn't heal with a vampire’s normal speed, and healed slowly at best with large amounts of blood.  It was more like poison ivy, irritating where it pricked skin.

And Ash was showing some lovely welts where he'd been scratched by the stuff.

Jinxx snickered into his mug and watched as Andy carefully dabbed a bit of some home remedy on each welt and puncture and had to turn away when Ash squealed that Andy was tickling him.

He blinked when he saw the blinking red light of a cam-corder and boggled for a second at the laughter behind blue-gray eyes.

Sammy Black was an evil, _evil_ man.

This was going to be priceless.

 

 

~0~ Pictures: Day 20 ~0~

 

Andy groaned and flopped back on the bed.

“Ash.”

The response was a distracted sounding hum, but Andy knew he had the vampire's attention even if he was still in the bathroom brushing his teeth.

“Why is there a video of me helping dose your Holly bites on our fan forum?”

That got a more focused reply, a strangled blurgel noise and Ash sputtering toothpaste into the sink, but more than the hum he'd gotten before.  It also had Ash scrambling out of the bathroom to see.

“There's **_what_**?”

Andy nudged the open laptop with his knee.  It was open to the correct screen anyway.

Ash scrambled over and with trepidation clicked play as he held the headphones up to one ear.

A long moment of silence followed.

“Well, that wasn't as bad as it could have been.” 

Andy could hear the tapping of Ash scrolling down and knew some of the comments were getting read.

“I also think we may have supplanted Jinxx and Sammi's title for most syrupy sweet pair.”

Andy let out a low snort and sat back up on his elbows.

“I'm not sure I was trying for that.”

Ash smiled at him.

“I wasn't either, but at least the fan girls are still squeeing happily.  But I think we need to find a way of taking Sammy's camera away.”

Andy blinked.  He'd only gotten through the first page or so of new posts.

“Oh?”

Ash grinned and turned the laptop back around.

Andy groaned and slapped his hand into his face and flopped back on the bed.

“Jake is going to kill him.”

It was a short loop at least.  It showed Jake curled protectively around CC where the pair was sharing a chair, CC dead asleep and Jake stroking his fingers through the sleeping drummer’s hair with a soft and warm smile on his face.

 

 

~0~ Family: Day 21 ~0~

 

Jake saw the picture, and the videos on the fan forum and let out a pained sigh.

He liked Sammy, really he did.  The man was an excellent guitar player, had a quietly warped sense of humor and was fiercely devoted to the people he cared about.

That Jake and his team were only recent additions to that elite category wasn't relevant to the big man.  When the Finn loved it was with his whole being, nothing held back.

Which was nice; it meant CC had that many more protectors, because where Sammy went his team did as well.  Maybe not quietly, but they did come.

What Jake hadn't known was how small their world really was, not until he'd come into the kitchen and found Mikko there chattering away to Ash's grandma.

The Nephilium Mikko had called father had been part of Ash's tribe for years.  He'd been there so long it made Jake's head hurt to think about it.  Mikko's mom was a Finnish woman, just like his current papers said, but she'd been the daughter of a fur trapper in the early 1800's, not a modern linguist.  She had been fond of language, but not nearly the way Mikko currently was, then it was a matter of survival not a matter of convenience.

It left him wondering how Mikko had ended up in the Army; he wasn't exactly as young as he looked.  And that started Jake wondering how many Nephilium like Mikko were running around.  According to Julian and Theon they hadn't had a clue Mikko wasn't human before the night Ash had gotten mobbed and their team and Yu's had come riding to the rescue.

He looked up, out the back window and smiled faintly at where Rom, Jason and Christian were playing a mutant form of lycan tag with Jinxx.

He also wondered how Ash's family was coping with having an even dozen extra young men tromping around.

“We were expecting Mikko and Sammi's team.”

Jake flinched and looked up into the warm gaze of Ash's grandma.

“Mikko sometimes comes, when the burden of being just a man becomes too much.”

“So, you knew...” Jake trailed off, not sure how to ask his question.

“That Mikko Red Elk was a sky walker?  We've known for generations.  His mother helped our family keep land when the whites began their programs of 'protection'.”

Jake winced; those programs were more like systematic extermination in a lot of cases.

“Sky walker?  That sounds so Star Wars.”

Jake swatted at CC but had to laugh in spite of himself.  He managed to keep the tiny flinch in check when the elderly woman reached out to stroke a bit of CC's hair back from his face.

“You've seen him fly.”

CC's face lit up.

“Yeah, it's,” Jake bit his lip when CC edited himself, “It's _awesome_.”

The smile was warm.

“Yes, to be able to fly so, in summer some of my boys take ultralights up; officially it's to help the neighbors count their cattle.  But I know it's so they can feel as close to that as they can.  It's why Ash has always been so fond of fast motorcycles.”  The smile went a touch sad.  “His father took him on his first ride when he was just a tiny baby.  Maria was livid.”

“Tiny?  _Ash_?”

“He wasn't even two.”

Jake let out a low whistle as CC gasped out 'oh man'.

That rather explained a lot about Ash's fondness for anything high speed.  But that didn't explain why Ash had been so surprised to meet Mikko.

“So how come he didn't recognize Mikko when he bailed us out?”

Jake jumped when Mikko answered from behind the chair.

“Because I didn't look like this when I came to visit.  I looked like this.”

Jake felt his eyes go huge and heard CC's squeak as the shortish blond man who came around the chair changed as he walked.

Pale skin warned to golden as wheat gold hair darkened to the same raven wing black Ash's had, blue eyes changed to warm hazel and the man before him suddenly could vanish into the horde of Ash's male relatives without a ripple.

“Holy shit.”  Jake was in full agreement with CC's whispered words.

A shout from the kitchen and Mikko was trotting off, his appearance shifting back to the pale, blond and blue eyed one Jake knew.

“Was that cousin Mike I just saw?” asked Ash as he carried Andy in and dropped him carefully onto the couch.

The strange smile on his grandmother's face made even Jake hold his breath.

“You just go on into the kitchen and find out poppet.”

CC looked up at him and whispered in a shocked voice.

“Ash's family is fucking wild, man.”

“Yeah.”  No arguments there.

 

 

~0~  Cousin: Day 22 ~0~ 

 

NOTE: Memaw is an affectionate term for a grandmother, never mind Mikko is considerably older than Ash's Grandma.  He also calls Ash's aunts and uncles and assorted older relatives Aunt and Uncle and the younger ones Cousin, it's a respect thing.  There isn't actually any true blood relation there; his Father was kin by adoption.

 

 

Ash shook his head as he trotted into the kitchen, then he stopped head and cocked his head to one side as he looked at Mikko from behind.

Blond hair, dead straight blond hair, tied up in two neat braids down a lean back covered in a blue and white patterned sweater.

Two of his aunts by marriage were doing the coking, assorted cousins were helping.

The profile made things click.  In his mind the hair went black and the skin warmed from the winter pallor it currently had.  His cousin Mike was Mikko.

“You've known me all along.”

Mikko turned with a querying noise.

“You knew.  When Sammy and Yu and the rest picked our sorry asses up.  You **knew** me.  That's why you insisted on us being brought home with you.  That's why you got in the Legates face when he questioned my bond with Andy.”

Mikko blinked and suddenly smiled.

“I wondered when you'd remember.”

“God, I am so fucking dense... have any of the guys figured it out?”

“Memaw just let CC and Jake in on things, but Jake was asking the right questions.  And Ash,” strong hands caught his shoulders.  “I insisted because of Andy as well.  A Prophet is far too important to be left lying around.  That I could see the ties he had to one of my little cousins just cemented things.”

Ash grimaced at the endearment, but found himself smiling anyway.

“It's just, learning that the music world is smaller than I expected…”

That got him a smile and a warm chuckle.

“Tell me about it.  Just wait until you meet Linke and his lot of lunatics.”

That name was familiar, Ash tried tracking it down.

“He's part of the Panik team, and is one of Yu's good friends.”

Ash's eyes widened.

“He's another Slayer isn't he?”

Mikko nodded.

Ash raked his hands through his hair.

“Wow.”

“Go sit with your mate, and get your mind around it.  Yu took a couple days when he realized how connected he was once it was pointed out to him.”

“Kiro probably is still teasing him about it,” Ash grumbled with a fond smile for the Summoner.

Mikko just grinned at him and went back to helping cook.

 

 

~0~ Snow Angels: Day 23 ~0~

 

Jinxx panted and rolled out of wolf shape to sprawl in the snow staring up at the sky.

God, he'd forgotten how much fun it was to be part of a proper pack in winter.  Christian was so much bigger than him it wasn't remotely funny, and could bowl him over like it was nothing.  Rom apparently was familiar with his tricks and had one of his own, where he belly flopped to the snow right as Christian charged.

The resulting tumble was hysterical.

Jason had gotten bored with tag and chase fairly quickly and had gone after mice.

That had Jinxx laughing helplessly now that he was human again.

But watching a wolf pouncing mice was always rather hysterical, he just hoped Jason wasn't expecting them to actually _eat_ the little things.

One of the watching barn cats set his mind at ease as she waited until Jason was done massacring as much of the mouse population as he felt like and came over to roll out of his blockier wolf shape to flop face up in the snow as well.  The cat calmly moved in to remove the tiny carcasses and carry them off to the barn for a more private feast.

They shared a grin and both flailed in a very specific manner before carefully getting up and finding a clear patch of snow to do it again.

“What are you two lunatics doing?”  Like Rom couldn't figure it out just by looking.

Jinxx grinned.

“Duh, Snow angels!”

 

 

~0~ Stockings: Day 24 ~0~

 

Andy felt a touch bemused when on Christmas Eve everyone got handed a stocking.

Everyone.

Even him.

He hadn't had a Christmas stocking since he was a child.

Watching Ash's younger cousins tear into theirs made him smile a bit in nostalgia.  Hearing Kiro's delighted squeal as he dumped his out made him wonder if the Summoner had ever really grown up.

Then he looked at Ash in his Hello Kitty hood and remembered that really none of them were all **_that_** old yet.

CC let out a happy squeak and Andy barely held in a snicker at the way the drummer wriggled and the amused smile Jake wore.  It had taken a while but Jake was finally relaxing and able to actually enjoy the holiday for a change.  Normally he'd only really relax when his brother was around to help keep CC protected.

The weirdness of two Mourners in one family, and the habit the two had of sharing a brain when close together was something Andy carefully avoided thinking too hard about.

Andy sighed and dumped over his own stocking.

It was filled with the expected fruit, candy and nuts and had a few small things that made him laugh.

He didn't think that the little gel rings were going to get used for whatever their intended purpose was tonight.  Ash locked eyes with him and grinned brightly as he unwrapped, and then deep throated a candy cane.

Andy gulped.

God, he was so going to love it when they were alone tonight.

 

 

~0~ Presents: Day 25 ~0~

 

Ash groaned when he heard the squealing of children.

He loved his little cousins and his nephews, honestly he did.  But they got so hyper on Christmas morning that it was a bit much to take.

Then his ears pricked up.

That was Jinxx.

He sat up on one elbow.

That was Jinxx and two childish voices.

He listened more carefully, and then grinned.

“Mmmuhh?”

Andy was grumbling about his bedwarmer moving and letting in a cold draft.

Ash grinned and gave Andy a purely mental poke.  The startled squeal made him crack up.

“What, _exactly_ , was **_that_** is aide of?”

Andy was cute when he scowled, but Ash would never tell him that.

Andy's eyes narrowed.

“I am **_not_** cute...”

Ash grinned, so much for keeping _that_ thought quiet.

“Come on,” he tugged his lover out of the bed and tossed him a warm shirt.  “I sounds like Jake's present to Jinxx came through.”

Andy blinked then scrambled to dress as well.

If nothing else it saved them from the pointy knees and elbows of his older nephew as he came charging down the hall squealing in glee.

To have that much energy, Ash sighed.

Then he saw Jinxx, his arms full of his children and with the goofiest happy smile on his face.

Ash shared a smile with Andy.  That was one present that was a confirmed win.

He wasn't going to ask who Jake owed his soul for three plane tickets the night before Christmas.  He suspected he knew already if the smug grins on Sammy and Yu's faces were anything to go by.

Downstairs he was a touch surprised to see Mikko with black hair, but then kicked himself.  No point in confusing the kids.

At least this way 'Cousin Mike's' legendary generosity would get passed on to another generation of Purdy's.

He blinked at the piles of presents the children were sorting out of the pile, and amended that thought to include the new generation of Jinxx puppies.

The twins seemed thrilled to be getting Christmas twice.

Ash found his eyes being caught by Strify and had to duck his head to hide the grin that Strify's exaggerated eye roll brought out.

Like the Mage didn't love presents just as much as the rest of them.

The best present though, at least for him, was being in the middle of his family, both blood and by choice and having it be peaceful.

Squealing children was a good noise.

He trailed his eyes over the crowd.

Yu and Kiro were being cute and holding his little cousin Amie upright on her new bike.  Christian was in wolf shape and putting up with his sister's new baby pulling on his ears while Jason and Julian giggled at him.  He had to bite back a smile at how Luminor was trailing a bit of long black hair over the nape of Strify's neck and making him squirm.  He did grin at the sappy smiles CC and Jake kept sharing as they watched Jinxx cuddle Sammi and watch their little ones.

He blinked when the other Sammy threaded through the crowd with mugs of cocoa and cider for people and cracked up at the look of amazement on Vivian's face at something one of his other little cousins was telling him.

Ash leaned in when he felt Andy's long arm drape around his shoulder.

“Good Christmas?”

“The best.”

They both cracked up when one of the kids asked how they knew, they hadn't even opened their presents yet!


	11. What Joys May Come

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Panik team learns about the Brides team.. and does some hard thinking...

Linke felt his ears burning and carefully scanned his surroundings.

No one appeared to be paying any attention to him.  That meant someone was talking about him.

Joy.  That was **_so_** uncommon.

“Chris?”

Jan followed closely by Juri with mugs of tea.

“Funny feeling.”

“Bad or good?” Typical Juri to focus on the critical bits.

“Not sure yet.  Odd certainly.”

“Everything with us is odd, so what else is new.”

Linke grimaced.  Jan did have a point.

Then Linke was wincing.

Much as he loved David he really wished he'd quit deciding to visit by simply dropping in from above.

At least this time he hadn't heard Timo screaming his lungs out. 

Linke rose and set aside his guitar and headed for the roof with a resigned sigh.

How the hell had he gotten into this again.

Oh wait, that's right, he signed up for this.

~0~

David was bouncing, happy bouncing at least and Timo was curled in a groggy ball by the roof's edge.

That wasn't good.

Linke took a quick glance over the edge and reminded himself to water the community gardens before anyone else came home.

Maybe then no one would notice.

Then he grunted as David plowed into him for a gleeful hug.

He really wished the information available on Nephilum was a bit better than whimsy and rumor.  He was getting heartily tired of learning things ass backwards by dealing with the bands example of the species.

Linke fleetingly wondered if first and second generation Nephilium were less flighty than David could be.

Then he processed what David was actually _saying_ and groaned.

He never should have let Yu and Rom introduce David to Strify, Lu and Kiro.

He also should have made damn sure that they didn't exchange phone numbers.

Too late now.

He took a fortifying breath and looked at the pictures.

Then he blinked.

Okay.

That was Rom.  But who in Hades were the other three lycan?

Scratch that, four.  Four adult lycan and two cubs.

Linke closed his eyes and prayed for strength.

Then he looked at more pictures and listened to happy babble.

Gradually things resolved in his mind.

The other lycan, the males anyway, were part of two teams very like theirs.  Jinxx, and Linke shook his head at the name, was part of one, one that was based ridiculously close to them.  Jason and Christian were part of another based out of Tampere, Finland.

When he got another good look at the pair and their mate he recognized the vampire and singer in the background.

That explained a great deal right there.

God, but the world was a small place sometimes.

At least Theon was more his usual sort of lunatic and he knew the man from a few of the forums their kind frequented and knew his research was solid.

But now that made him wonder where he was getting his information of Nephilium from.

Then he saw the picture that must have set David off.

Another Nephilium.

His wings looked more like a bat's and less like the soft feathered expanses David's were. But if he was affiliated with Theon's Hunt that meant he wasn't first generation.  First generations were still bound by the Edict of Angels.  He had to be second generation or third like David was.

Linke looked through the pictures more carefully.

There was something odd about the third team, the one with Jinxx, and not just that one of them had a mate outside the group.  The bitch might have been a more active member before the cubs had moved her to a more peripheral status.

Linke grimaced at his own thoughts, Jan would cackle at him for thinking of a girl as a bitch and not meaning it as anything derogatory.

“Ohhh.”

Speak, or think of the Imp, and there he was.  Juri leaned over and rested his chin on Linke's shoulder and watched as Jan flipped through the pictures on David's phone.

“Good mix there.  I just wonder what the one tall one is.”

“Which tall one?”  Linke hadn't noticed any of them being what anyone would call _short_.

“Back one, one more, him.” Juri pointed and Linke looked at the slender man where he was curled in the arms of one of the more blocky members of his team.

Juri was right there was something odd about him, something about his eyes.

He'd have to dig out his mother's cards and do a reading.

“David...”

“I made Timo bring extra printer toner for the pictures.”

Linke smiled wryly.

That was _so_ David.

~0~

Juri had gone out for food with Jan while Linke was downloading and printing pictures.

David had fluttered over Timo in a way that Linke found to be very amusing, at least until he realized the rapper's uncharacteristic bought of airsickness wasn't brought about by his phobia and David's love of plummeting from a great height, but by him still recovering from a bought of flu.

That had gotten him tucked into the bed in the spare room and left to David's tender advances.

At least until the doorbell rang.

When the door opened shortly afterwards Linke sighed and looked up into annoyed blue eyes.

“You might have warned me.”

“Uh, Frank we just...”

Franky held up a hand and Linke shut up.  He knew that look, he wasn't about to piss off anyone who could throw levin bolts as accurately as Frank could when he wore _that_ look.

He liked his balls intact thank you.  He had two lovers to keep happy.

“Go, get the cards.  I'll finish these.”

Linke didn't ask, he just scuttled.

~0~

When they all settled down to dishes of Han Lin's most excellent Chinese food Linke felt a bit unsettled.

Not that what the cards had said was ambiguous, for once they'd been _very_ clear, but at the creeping feeling that anything that needed four teams of Hunters to cope with it must be very very bad indeed.

“So, how fucked are we?”

“ **Ti _~mo_**!”  David swatted at Timo's head, and missed as the man ducked.

“Not fucked, at least not yet I think.” answered Linke after he'd chewed a bite of eggplant to buy some thinking time.

“You think?” Jan's tone was incredulous.

“Is this the gods way of un-subtly hinting we need to be friends with more than just Yu's team,” asked Juri before he sipped at a bit of broth.

“Yes,” that he was pretty sure of, the rest was making him uneasy.

“So, another Nephilium.”

Linke grimaced.  That was really the least of the worries crowding his mind right now.

“What are the others?” Juri, being practical again.

Linke sorted out the pictures, specifically going for ones of individuals and mate sets.

“Vampire.” He laid out three, Vivian, Sammy and Ashley.

“He doesn't look like a vamp to me.” Timo leaned forward and poked the photo of Ashley wearing a hat with russet fox ears and looking like he was laughing himself silly.

“Hereditary, not Turned.”  Linke managed a crooked smile at Timo's look of surprise and Jan's 'really?'  “That's not all; the cards say he's Deviant.

That provoked a series of shocked faces and startled noises.

“Lycan.”  He laid out Jinxx, Jason, Christian and Rom, even though everyone knew Rom already.  He also added the shot of Jinxx's mate and their cubs.  His finger lingered to tap on Jinxx.  “Mystic, you know what that means.”  Linke leveled a look at Juri.

Juri grimaced.  He knew better than most.  His grandmother was still cackling at him about having his heritage come up and bite him on his furry rump.  He was still learning to cope with having spirits wanting to talk to him.

He laid out a shot of Ashley and Andrew.

“Prophet.”

Frank's eyebrows went up.

“Really?”

“And those two are mated, fairly recently.”

Timo let out a low whistle.

Linke smiled tightly at Timo.

“It gets better, or worse.”

“You fill me with foreboding,” cracked Timo.

“Mourner,” he laid out the shot with Jake and CC curled around each other in a chair and sharing a mug of something.

“Okay?” Jan prompted.

Linke taped a finger on CC.

“Destroyer.”

He sat back and waited for the explosion to die down.

~0~

Juri ended up being the voice of sanity, simply by shouting everyone else down, after he'd stolen everyone but Linke's phone to keep them from flooding Yu's inbox with 'WTF???!' texts.

“Clearly he's stable, or they'd have destroyed him already.  Yu's team would never willingly let something that dangerous run wild.”

“Willingly being the operative word,” snarked Timo.

“What could one small and clearly relatively unknown team do to keep Yu from protecting Kiro?  Really?  If Yu thought this kid was a threat he'd be gone.”

Linke winced, but he had to agree with Juri's opinion.  Yu had gone after greater demons to protect Kiro before.

That Kiro was usually the one doing the saving of his bacon wasn't relevant, he'd do whatever it took to keep Kiro safe.

“Maybe he's only just come online?” offered Frank.

“Or he's not very strong,” suggested Jan.

Linke shook his head to both.

“The cards say he's been online for a few years at least and he's _very_ strong.”

“Well fuck.” Linke smiled wanly at Jan's remark.  Then blinked at his next thought.

Jan picked up the picture of Jake and CC together.

“There are a lot like this right?”

“Yeah,” Linke waited for Jan to put his thoughts together.

“He's a Mourner, maybe he's why the other kid is safe.”

“Jan, if you're back on that stupi...”

“No, he may have a point.” Frank interrupted Timo.  “Seriously Timo, who was killed right before that last Destroyer we had to deal with went ballistic?”

“His best friend?” Timo hazarded, but David had already seen what Frank had.

“His best friend who was a **_Mourner_**!”

“That's one case, and _maybe_ the kid was a Mourner.”

Linke grimaced just as Juri winced.

“He was. And yes, Timo, I know one case isn't proof.  But it is interesting.”

“And bears some looking into.  So no beheading when we meet them Timo.”

Timo settled with a low growl.

“How would you feel about someone you'd just met going after David?”  Linke hated using that tactic, but unfortunately it was a valid point.

Timo winced but nodded as David cuddled into his side with a soft whisper.

“So, when is Yu due back Chris?”

Linke didn't even need to check the calendar on the fridge.

“Two weeks from last Thursday, so twelfth night?”

Frank looked at the calendar.

“The sixth.  We can work with that.”  Then he smiled and reached his hand to the center of the table.

“To what joys may come?”

Linke reached in and swore just as Jan, and Juri did, Timo and David followed a breath later.

It was going to be an interesting year.


	12. Oh, Yay, Valentines Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ghouls are no respecters of holiday plans, but who needs a silly holiday to show someone how much you love them?

Andy groaned and rolled his head back into the back of the recliner.

It wasn't that he didn't want the guys happy, he did.  But did they have to be so damned sicky cute about it?  He'd have thought by now the cutes would have died back to an acceptable level.

He sighed again and rolled his head back down to half glare at the pair murmuring soft words to each other as they gingerly cuddled on the couch. 

Andy winced.

His ribs hurt, hell, his whole body hurt, from the last fight they'd gotten into, but ghouls never seemed to come by ones and twos, they always seemed to come in zombie movie hordes numbering in the dozens.  He was battered and bruised, but Jake and CC _both_ had cracked ribs and one of the damn things had tried pulling CC's left arm out of socket leaving the drummer with a nasty set of bruises.

That hadn't worked so well, not for the ghoul anyway.

It _had_ demonstrated that intensive work with Kiro and lately Luminor had done wonders for CC's control.  Instead of a full on panicked flip out and blasting the whole area to shit, ghoul and teammate alike, CC had just nuked the one Ghoul with a fist sized ball of clear red light.

Well, him and any others directly behind him.  The ball hadn't stopped after blowing through the first ghoul’s chest.

It had left a neat hole in the attacking ghoul and fist sized holes in another six or so that had been behind the one attacking him.  Fortunately it had petered out before it had hit the alley wall and risked bouncing.

 _Jake_ was the one who had flipped out a bit.  He'd emptied two clips into the damn things and twisted his knee, _again_ , trying to get to CC's side.  Only when he slipped and went down did CC start chucking soccer ball sized balls of red light at the ghouls.

They were effective, just messy as all hell and meant that Jinxx had to do some work to mask that distinctive aura residue.  At least CC had excellent aim, even if the splatter from the bigger balls was a huge mess.  And this time even in his panic he'd set the balls to evaporate a set distance from him, which looked odd when one fizzled out halfway through a ghoul.  God only knew what the PSTaF cleanup crew would make of that.

 They'd all noticed though, that once Jake had hit the ground _none_ of the ghouls could get within an arm’s reach of him _or_ CC, and the amber colored drops both wore on chains around  their necks had glowed so bright none of them had dared look at them.  It was something they been warned about, but the glow was still really damn distracting.

They'd won, without any unexpected outside help, but all five of them were beaten to hell, covered in nasty, smelly shit that Andy still refused to think to hard about.  They'd all used the outdoor beach showers as they'd been closest and would keep them from having to call in another plumber for one of the apartments. 

Only Guardian Plumbing would unclog things without asking probing questions or worse calling the cops with the suspicion that they'd killed someone and run their remains down the drains.  And given Guardian Plumbing _had_ two actual Guardians on staff, they were a touch reluctant to call them unless they **_had_** to.  Pete and Mark thought it was funny, but both understood as busy times for the team tended to be busy times for the Guardians as well, and that was with the peculiarities of how their powers worked.

Andy knew if they needed help they only had to ask, but he really preferred not to ask, Pete and Mark didn't know about CC, they all would rather keep it that way.

Andy still had hogged one shower for a good hour once they'd made it back to the Tower.  He'd even refused to let Ash in to scrub his back until he'd gotten the last of the blood out of his hair.  By the time he'd been ready to let his vampire near him Ash had conked out leaning against the wall by the door.

It looked like Sandra had forced him into one of the other showers though; his hair had been clean and still wet.

He blessed their sister for her forethought; she'd brought cokes, pizza (Margarita and pesto thank you, none of them could stomach the thought of pepperoni right now) and a bag of fresh coffee for the morning. He also blessed her, though he'd bitched last night, for grabbing Jason to patch them up a bit.

Jason had been amused, but he was used to middle of the night calls, even if it wasn't usually Andy's crew calling.  Lovex was officially on tour and doing a few shows in the area.  Unofficially they had been helping chase down some jackass who thought stealing kids to sacrifice to demons was an okay thing.

Thanks to Christian's methodical mind and Jason's clever nose they'd caught _him_ fairly quickly, and with minimal damages to themselves for once, so they'd come as a troop when Sandra called.

Andy had been less than thrilled with that.

But he _hated_ being carried around like a little kid.

He also hated being put to bed like a little kid, and Sammy fucking Black had done both.  Worse the cock sucking bastard had tucked him in and kissed his forehead then sat with him until Christian brought Ash in and then they tucked him in beside Andy.

Ash had been dead asleep, so he missed the indignity.

Lucky bastard.

At least Sammy had understood that Andy didn't sleep very well now unless Ash was beside him, flopped over him or snuggled under him.  But he was bonded as well, so he probably was just as bad with Mikko.

In the clear light of day Andy was marginally okay with Sandra calling in the cavalry, it helped that Sammy didn't breathe a word about him carrying Andy around.

Speaking of... Andy slanted a look over to where Jason was rechecking Jinxx's arm.  Jinxx had been their worst casualty, with what at the time, had sounded a lot like a broken arm.  If he hadn't been lycan they'd have had a very nasty injury to try and explain to their fans, fortunately Jinxx was lycan and Ash had been able to get the bones more or less back in the right places.

“Not that I'm complaining, but how come you guys are still here?”

“Hiding out,” Jason answered without even looking up from the careful wrap job he was doing on Jinxx's right arm.  He'd been the one to do a more proper setting job and dose Jinxx with the stuff to start the healing process and kill the worst of the pain.  Andy could smell some of the goop that the linen had been smeared with, and was glad the bone mending and pain killing properties worked on humans as well as lycan as it was helping CC and Jake breathe easier.

Andy blinked blankly.

“Hiding out?  Hiding from what?”

Vivian made a rude noise and Theon let out a theatrical groan and began to pace and flail his arms around in the expansive gestures the man was known for.

“I _hate_ Valentine’s day!  Psychotic fan girls with **no** concept that the word 'no' could _possibly_ apply to them!  All of them dead certain if they can get in my pants I'll marry them because it's _Twuuu Luurve_. Blegh.”

Andy couldn't stop the snort of amusement.

“Oh, you laugh!  You haven't gotten full on groped and fondled in front of your mate by some nutcase fan girl who has your wedding, to _her_ , all planned out, never mind you've never even _met_ her before _and_ she's underage.”

Theon's flailing and ranting had Andy biting his lip, then snickering and then giving up and all out laughing in reaction.

Ash just let out a rude snort.

“Oh he's had the handsy wedding bells of doom girls before.” Ash handed down a mug of coffee laden with sugar and cream like Andy liked.  “And the last one about swallowed her tongue when I mentioned Andy was already married.”  Andy could _feel_ the wicked grin on Ash's face, just from the glee echoing down their bond.

“Dude, offering to play swinger threesome is what had her freaking out,” razzed Jake from his spot half under CC on the couch.

Andy cracked up, but he knew what Ash was going to say.

“Well, it's not cheating if I'm _right there_ is it?”

Jason chucked a wadded up scrap of bandage at Ash's head.

“Silly vampire, didn't you get the lecture on not freaking out the Normals?”  Jason was smiling though, so Andy didn't think his lecture was serious.  When Jason was serious he tended to deliver his lectures with his big heavy butt planted on the victims diaphragm, he was harder to ignore then.

Ash chortled and ducked the bit of clean linen.

Andy smirked and teased dryly.

“He probably skipped school that day to chase after some cheerleader who would put out.”

Ash pretended to think hard then shrugged and grinned before reaching a hand down to stroke light fingers over Andy's cheekbone.

“Probably.  But I don't need to do that anymore.”

Jason groaned and levered himself back to his feet.  He headed to the kitchen grumbling about newlywed-itus under his breath.

“They've only been together a year Jase, what's your excuse?” ribbed Theon.  He chortled when the only answer he got was a one fingered salute from the lycan.

Andy blinked in surprise and reached for Ash down the bond. They'd had a general feel for each other right from the get go, but actual _words_ in complete sentences without emotional interference were a relatively recent development.

_~Has it been a year already?  It seems like we just got back from Christmas vacation.~_

_~Come March, yeah.  Doesn't explain Cese and Jake though.~_ came Ash's answer with a threading of affection and amusement.

Andy cracked up.  Jake had been head over heels for the drummer almost from the moment they met.  He'd just resisted doing anything until the night after they'd moved CC into his new apartment.  He'd resisted doing more than petting for almost a month.  Then they'd scavenged _real_ furniture to replace the battered futon mattress and cushions in CC's place, including a bed that looked like it hadn't ever been slept on.  _Then_ the guitarist had succumbed.  Succumbed, or CC had pounced, they really weren't sure which.  Not that it mattered as far as the end result was concerned.

He sobered and looked at the pair with a more serious eye.

Even now the two were stupid sappy cute, just as bad as Jinxx and Sammi were.  He suspected rather strongly that _they_ could do the ‘think at each other’ thing that he and Ash had begun doing with regularity lately.  He'd seen them sharing looks and one or the other, usually CC, breaking up laughing for no apparent reason.

_~Good thing we didn't have real plans for Valentine’s Day~_

Andy grunted up at Ash and shot him a confused look for the comment.  He got a warm smile a gentle caress and an amused verbal answer that probably confused the fuck out of the guys.

“Gee, lessee, got flattened by ghouls, and would have completely missed a nice dinner the night before.  Absolutely would have missed the nice dinner last night.  And you know no place with sense would hold a missed reservation longer than 20 minutes on a major day like yesterday.” 

Andy winced; Jinxx **_had_** had plans last night to have a nice dinner with Sammi, plans that had gotten blown merrily all to hell.  At least Sammi had called early enough to cancel the reservations so they hadn't been slapped with a no show fee.  Jinxx sometimes grumbled about not ever being able to surprise her given how closely they'd bonded, but that tightness had saved him fifty bucks.  That and Sammi loved that he kept trying.

Andy rolled his head over to look over at Jinxx and had to smile at how the lycan had his eyes closed and was nuzzling into his wife's throat as she stroked her fingers through his hair.

Still stupid cute after all this time.

They didn't need a silly pink hearts and flowers holiday to show each other they cared.  They did it every damn day to the point that Andy had chucked pillows at the pair to try and stop the cute.  And if the twins were around it got _worse_.  Jinxx loved his kids, and let it show, to the point it made the fan girls coo in delight.

Andy sighed and let his eyes track over the rest of the people he could see.

Theon was grouching still about 'fucking Valentine’s day' but was accepting Vivian's gentle touches and starting to cuddle down close to his vampire.  CC and Jake were doing the little nose rub thing that normally meant they were about to start kissing like that was the only way to keep alive.  Jinxx had just buried his face in Sammi's cleavage in an attempt to stifle his laughter.  No telling what Sammi had thought at him that had set him off.  Given he was slightly high on the lycan version of high power pain-killers, both coating his bandages and taken as a tea, it could have been something innocuous.

Christian was softly arguing something with Sandra, and had Julian tucked into his side.

Andy frowned, then relaxed as Jason came back in with mugs and settled in on Julian's other side to bracket the Wardsmith.  Sandra just rolled her eyes at the cute, but accepted the offered mug with a lopsided grin.  According to Sandra her mate had taken the twins Underhill and had taken Jinxx's mini-me's along for the ride.  That helped keep the boys from fretting, or from climbing all over Jinxx and jolting healing injuries.

He remembered Ash's first attempt at solo mindering of the twin furballs.  He really didn't think five was going to be any easier than at barely three.

_~Six.~_

_~hunh?~_

_~Six, Ian and Mark are six.~_

_~It makes that big of a difference?~_

_~At that age?  God, yes.  They'll tell you **all** about it too if you get it wrong.~  _ There were all sorts of undertones to Ash's thoughts, amused, resigned and even faintly wistful.

Andy gulped.  Those two menaces ganging up on him was a vision out of a nightmare.

Sandra said he was a pussy when it came to kids.  Seeing how neatly her two had him twisted up in knots he had to agree, but only in the deepest pits of his own mind.

_~I agree, little kids with magic are scary as fuck.~_

Andy winced again; clearly the deepest darkest pits of his own mind weren't deep enough, Ash was plucking his thoughts out with ease.

Ash slid over the back of the recliner and settled in to cuddle in close.

“Trust me babe,” he whispered. “When Jinxx's two start manifesting I will _not_ be offering to mind them.”

“I'd think not, not alone anyway,” came the soft tease from one of the last pair in the house.  Mikko smiled down at them as he walked around the chair to set a pot of something that steamed and smelled good on a hot plate in the center of the coffee table.  “Kids with active magic need minders with active magic, and Andy's really isn't the sort to be able to contain two imps of mischief.”

Ash blinked, Andy smiled crookedly.

“Sandra had you mindering her two hellions?”

Mikko made a face.

“Yes.  All the practice with the cousins was _no_ help.”  That tone implied an amusing story, that he'd have to pry out of the Nephilium later.

Andy chuckled at the reference to all of Ash's younger cousins.  He refused to think about the fact that Ash might _be_ one of the children Mikko meant, given how old he was.  Mikko looked their age and mostly acted their age, so Andy had decided he was going to be in denial on the subject until he had no other choice on the subject.

“Chicken soup?” asked CC as he carefully sat up.

“Yeah, figured none of you was going to want anything resembling red meat for a few days.”

Jake winced, as did Ash, but he'd gotten a proper nip off Andy early this morning.

“Point.  Where's your bigger half?”

Mikko grinned at the joke.  But he was shorter than Ash and Sammy was as tall as Andy but significantly broader, and the one time Andy had cracked about ‘better’ halves Sammy had thrown things at him.

“He's off scoring after Valentine’s Day chocolates.”

“How is that man not the size of a house?” snarked Sandra.  “He made off with a sack of after Christmas chocolates bigger than **_I_** am.”

Christian made a rude snerk noise, but Jason answered her.

“He shares.”

Sandra leveled a _look_ at the two lycan and the giggling human between them.

“That still doesn't explain how all of you aren't _round_.”

“He also hoards,” offered Mikko.  “He just cracked into the last of the toffee dark chocolate oranges this morning. They're in the tub on the counter.”

Sandra scowled; she had a well known weakness for dark chocolate anything.

“ _You_ are trying to make me fat.”

Mikko let out a rude noise even as the rest of the guys protested their innocence.

“If you're fat, I'm a real lard ass.  Sandra, you chase two little boys and drum for a living; no way you're getting fat.  Besides I'd rather ogle girls with hips not the walking bone racks the fashion guru's say are in.”

There was a long moment of silence as they processed that, Andy struggled between laughing outright and indignation on his sister's behalf.  Sandra's glare over her sunglasses was downright toxic.

“What?” protested Mikko, as he noticed the collection of looks the guys were shooting him.  “I'm _bonded,_ not **_dead_**. I'm also not stupid; Jael scares the crap out of me.  And Sammy was the one who noticed her hips first.”

Sandra made a harumph sound and reached for one of the mugs on the tray with the soup pot and served herself a portion.  Andy suspected she was pleased though, but he never could really tell for sure.

A slamming door had Mikko up and moving before any of the rest of them could do more than turn their heads toward the sound.

“It's me,” called Sammy, more for the rest of their benefits, as Mikko would have known darn good and well who it was thanks to their bond.  “And Kiro and Yu are with me.”

Andy groaned, not that he didn't like the pair, just their turning up tended to not mean good things.

“More cutes.  At this rate I'll be dead of the cutes before nightfall,” groused Andy with a wry smile and a wave for the two men.  He wasn’t really serious though, happy pairs were better than the alternative.

“Better hurry then, the sun was setting as we drove up,” teased Yu as Kiro bounded in for his ritual greeting of hugs.

Andy offered a one finger salute as Ash passed him a mug of soup.

“Oh god,” moaned Jake. “It's _pink_ , Kiro how could you wear **_pink_**?”

Kiro just chortled in glee and twirled in place to show off his luridly hot pink shirt.

“To keep the girls off 'cause he's gay?” asked CC, actually somewhat seriously as he eased off Jake and gingerly sat up.

Jake stopped and considered that, then shuddered as he sat up and scotched over to make room.

“Still not wearing pink.”

“Not that shade especially.” agreed Sammy mildly as he set a double armful of bags down.  “Not that Kiro's normal blue is much less on the make the eyes bleed scale.  And gently Kiro, Jake and Cese are nursing cracked ribs.”

Kiro made a sad face, but did tone down him normal spine popping hugs for the two men.  The concerned whispers that went with the hugs made Andy relax a bit, Kiro and Yu sometimes just showed up to keep company, and not due to anything more sinister.  This sounded like it was going to be one of those more pleasant times.

“You guys are okay though?  We heard about the trouble a _lot_ to late to be useful.  With traffic sucking we'd have gotten there about the time the PD's PSTaF clean up squad was getting ready to leave.” Yu asked as he stole a mug of soup and settled on the arm of the couch.

“And traffic has been sucking balls lately,” agreed Sandra and Andy simultaneously.  They grinned at each other and Sandra continued with a jibe of “Jinx.” that made Andy snort and stick out his tongue.

“Hey, don't blame me,” joked Jinxx as he shifted his injured arm so Sammi could settle back beside him with two mugs of soup.  She'd made sure he could mostly drink his as his wrist and arm would protest loudly at something as light at a loaded spoon until he'd been able to get a few shifts under his belt to force the damaged bones and tissues to heal.

He'd still hurt for several days after the damage was healed, and Jason was wanting some of the swelling to go down before Jinxx started shifting just in the name of lessening the number of days Jinxx would be in pain after things had healed.

“Yeah, we're all mostly okay.  Was just a _lot_ more ghouls than the reports were saying,” Ash answered the actual question around a few sips of soup.

Yu grimaced.

“That's becoming the norm with ghouls.  I suggested to Linke a couple days ago that any report we got we should multiply the numbers by three so it wasn't as nasty a surprise.”  Yu sipped carefully at his mug, winced and cautiously blew on the steaming contents.

There was a ragged chorus of 'amen's' from around the room.

“Would still have been light though, just not _as_ bad.  If we'd known we'd have asked for help from the get go.”  Andy sighed as he warmed his hands on his mug and leaned a bit closer into Ash.

Yu shifted off the arm and into the couch more properly and tucked Kiro into his side letting the little summoner steal the soup mug from him.  The Slayer looked serious as he asked.

“What was the report you got?”

“Was a cluster of six on the report.  Closer to thirty in the field.  And the damn things don't reproduce on their own.”

Yu hissed in sympathy as Kiro winced.  But Kiro knew the in’s and out's of ghoul creation better than any of them, not that he summoned the things up out of the ground. The most summoning he did of ghouls was more the Pied Piper or irresistible bait type.  Which was useful for getting them all in a space to bless out of existence, but had its own share of problems.

“Six you could have managed, thirty is a bit much without backup.  How'd you cope?  Mass blessings out of Jinxx?” asked Yu before he stole the soup mug back from Kiro for a few careful sips.

Jinxx shook his head and answered.

“CC doing controlled tactical nuking.  Jake went down and he started chucking the balls of death at the damn things.”

Yu and Kiro both winced.

“Knee again?” asked Kiro with a worried look.  Jake blowing his bad knee in a fight was starting to become an un-funny joke between the teams.

“Yeah.”  Jake shrugged; he was used to his right knee being a pain in the ass.

“Balls of death?” asked Yu.  “That sounds like it should be a trademarked attack in some video game.”  He then crinkled his nose at CC's flush.

“It **_works_** , I'm _not_ complaining.  It's just a bitch for Jinxx to clean up.” defended Jake as he hugged CC with a bit of care for both their injuries.  Jake got a wan smile and CC resting his head on his shoulder as a reward.

“Not that bad, beats being _dead_ by a long shot.” defended Jinxx.  “And he's getting better, this last one I just had to nudge things a little and the fields dissipated.  He only really gets upset if Jake goes down.  Not like _we're_ any better.”  His eyes rested on Sammi and she sighed and shot him a look of warm affection mixed with exasperation.

“I don't play chicken with ghouls, love.”

“Not the point.” was Jinxx's tart reply.

“The point is we're getting crap intel when it comes to ghoul numbers.  I'd expect surges in numbers around the Quarter days, not mid February.”  Ash nudged them back on topic.

“We do need to figure out who's calling them and shut them down.  And maybe bitch-slap whoever in the PSTaF crew isn't reporting good numbers.”  Yu was brutally pragmatic on some subjects, but from the grunts of agreement from the lycan in the room Andy knew they were in full agreement.  Bad intel got Hunters killed, and if the Hunters went down even knowledgeable and empowered police forces tended to get massacred. It the cops got slaughtered; Normals were so much jam on toast as far as the ghouls were concerned.  It was in their best interest to make sure the information they passed on to the Hunter teams was as good as they could possibly make it.

Andy just wished that the most probable result of Slayer pragmatism wasn't a dead summoner of some flavor.  But he knew that some idiots just didn't learn and that just tossing them in jail wouldn't always stop the problem.

~0~

Andy woke up again to the feel of something getting painted on his naked back.

He and Ash had indulged in some slightly belated 'yay, we survived' sex mixed in with 'oh, yay, Valentine's Day' sex. He knew the rest of the guys had done the same thing, he had briefly wished for silencing wards on the walls when Jake and CC had started up.  How two men with cracked ribs managed to sound like they were doing wild and kinky sex he had no idea.  Maybe he'd just been attributing cries of pain to pleasure but Andy knew better than to go check.

He sure as hell wasn't going to _ask_ either.  Jake would grin and tell him, even with CC blushing beet red and burying his face in Jake's shoulder.

“Ash?”

“mm?”

“What are you doing?”

“You'll see.”

Andy sighed.

“Ash?”

“mhmm?”  The faint buzz that Andy had learned meant Ash was concentrating on something didn't change.

“How am I going to see, you're working on my back.”

He didn't need to turn and look to feel the wicked grin on his vampire's face.

“Ash?”

“Hmm?”

“Is this something that Sandra will kill us for when we ask how to get it out of the sheets?”

The bark of laughter and the bubbling feel of amusement down their bond was something of a relief.

“No.  I already made sure we have the sheets on the bed that won't show the chocolate stains too badly.”

Andy felt his eyes pop open.  Sure enough the sheets under them where the ones that were chocolate brown with darker brown stripes.  All he'd cared about last night was that they had been clean, warm and dry and had Ash in them; he hadn't paid any attention to the color.

He didn't get the chance to think about it any further as Ash stopped painting, set the dish of whatever he was using and the brush aside and began going back over his work with his tongue.

Andy tried to keep track, to try and build a mental picture of whatever Ash had written on him in his mind.

It didn't work.

He was panting before Ash made it to the small of his back, begging as he licked and lapped over his hips and buttocks and swearing as Ash lined up and slid in.

The bastard was going for long and slow this time.

~0~

Jake snorted when Andy started begging, and then grinned when CC started giggling at Andy's threats to Ash's manhood.  Ash was going for a long slow fuck this morning.  By now Andy should know that threatening to geld Ash if he didn't hurry the fuck up just made the vampire slow down more.

He had to admit that the idea of a long slow fuck sounded like a good one.

He nuzzled at CC's throat, just enough that CC let go so he could move, then he nipped and kissed his way down that long lean body.

The bandages sucked, but he could work around them.  At least the stuff smeared on them worked and didn’t smell or taste bad, not that he was going to _try_ and eat it.  Just CC squirmed and let out delightful noises when his tongue traced right by the fine linen wrapped around his lean chest.

CC let out a gasp as Jake sucked hard on one hipbone.  He whimpered as Jake moved further down and spread his legs to give Jake more room to play.

Ash liked a long slow fuck the morning after a fight; he liked a long slow blow.  And CC's thighs were already trembling in anticipation.

He liked a smooth stripe up a waiting cock.

CC squeaked and started to squirm.

Jake grinned and pinned CC's hips to the bedding and set to work.

He licked every bit of skin covering that straining cock.  He nuzzled and sucked both balls, and yet again was grateful CC liked being shaved and waxed down here.  CC said it kept things from chaffing when he drummed, Jake suspected it was also because he loved getting blown and knew Jake hated getting pubic hair in his teeth.

Jake shifted one long thigh over his shoulder and sucked the tip of a just barely leaking cock, then shifted the other thigh and swallowed all the way down as CC keened in pleasure.

With his hands still on CC's hips the drummer couldn't do more than squirm a little.  And squirm he did.

He squirmed, and panted and thrashed his head as he fisted his hands in the bedding.  His legs kicked weakly and then wrapped around Jake's shoulders as he tried and failed to buck up into the tormenting mouth sucking and licking him.  Jake was just grateful that no matter how crazy CC felt he was careful to not kick him in his injured ribs.  Healthy it was a turn on, injured, not so much.

Jake knew when CC was about to lose it, just from how his thighs shuddered and the tone of his cries and that let him back off to drop little kisses on his thighs and trace patterns on the skin on CC's belly with the tip of his tongue. 

CC swore at him the first time he did that, begged the second and was a screaming mess of wanton need the third.

The fourth time he was promising anything, begging, threatening, just _anything_ , anything at all so he could come.

Jake moaned into CC's thigh.  God he wished his knee wasn't fucked up.  He'd kneel up and slam into his lover so hard he'd scream if his knee wouldn't hurt like a bitch.

He crawled up CC”s body, not touching that straining cock.  Then rolled them over.

“Ride me baby.'

CC whimpered and was straddling Jake and lining up before Jake finished his plea.

“Ohhhh fuck.”

Jake arched up hard as CC slid down.  Even after a couple rounds last night his Destroyer was so tight.

CC moved, moved up and almost off then slid down again.

“Harder babe,” Jake gasped and CC sped up, kept speeding up until he was all but slamming down on every thrust.

Jake felt CC tighten up, and clutched his hips to get those last few sweet thrusts in.

CC was screaming over him, then holding himself up with trembling arms and panting as Jake felt his hips jerking in reaction to the aftershocks.

“As soon as my knee is healed,” he promised.  “I'm going fuck you and suck you so hard.”

CC smiled and half collapsed into Jake's waiting arms, fuck the mess, they could shower later.

~0~

Jinxx sometimes wished that as a lycan he didn't have superior hearing compared to his human brothers.  He heard Andy swearing and begging, heard the sounds that told him Jake was getting around the knee problem by getting CC to ride him, and that round two would be Jake getting his ass plowed by the drummer.

Not that he had any room at all to talk.

He smiled at his wife where she was curled into his arms.

He'd made her scream several times, held her tight with her back to his chest and fingered her until she was writhing in his arms.  Then he'd pinned her down and made her scream again with his mouth.  She'd been wet and more than ready when he'd slid inside her.  He'd lifted her up in his arms and backed her into the wall behind the mattress and taken her hard and deep as she'd raked her nails over his shoulders and yanked on his hair screaming for him.  His right arm was screaming at him for the abuse, but he thought it was worth it.

He'd heard muffled cries from Julian in the next room, muffled cries that mingled with the moans and growls of two lycan, the deeper growling cries coming from Jason the higher whimpers from Christian.  He suspected Julian was sucking Christian while being plowed by Jason, not that he had any proof.  Scenting them in the morning would be useless; they wore each other’s scents the way proper mates did.

Jinxx sighed and nuzzled his nose into Sammi's hair.  He wondered if any of the guys would be walking normally come breakfast time.

~0~

Sammi sighed and shifted; she'd felt Jinxx get up and knew he'd be back for her as soon as he knew what breakfast was going to be.

Then her nose twitched.

She smelled waffles, the really good ones with the Belgian sugar in them.

She sighed and sat up, then blinked when she saw Jinxx nudging the door closed again with one foot.  He grinned at her and she couldn't help but smile at the tray he had in his hands.

Waffles, a dish of syrup, piles of crispy bacon and a little vase with a rose in it.

“We kind of missed Valentine's day...”

Her Jinxx was such a darling sap.  Not that she would ever complain about it.

~0~

Jake winced and sat up, scootching up carefully until he could lean against the pile of pillows CC had heaped behind him.  He winced again but let out a low sigh of relief as another pillow got tucked under his injured knee.

“Breakfast in bed babe?”  He smiled up at his partner as CC set the tray down where they both could get at it.

“Mikko was doing Belgian waffles.  The ones like we got in Belgium.”

Jake let out a low whimper.  He remembered those.  Caramelized sugar bits, crispy outside, fluffy and sweet inside.  They'd hit the food truck that made them that had been parked near the venue so many times the guys running it had known exactly what they wanted without resorting to silly pantomime or butchered language.  They'd turn up with money and grins and they'd get smiles, some change and a pair of lovely hot treats covered in powdered sugar.

Jake whimpered again.  They were already in the neat waffle stick shape, perfect for dunking in the bowl of warm syrup and feeding to a lover.

CC dunked one and offered it.

Jake accepted with a happy moan.  He just crinkled his nose when CC teased him about having a food orgasm and took up a waffle stick to dunk and feed to CC.

Waffles, bacon and syrup. Combined with CC kisses, a perfect breakfast.

He already had a plan for the extra syrup, and they needed to wash these sheets anyway.

~0~

Ash blinked when he saw Andy curled up at the bar between the kitchen and living area.  Seeing Andy happily crunching his way through a pile of extra crispy bacon wasn't what had him blinking.  It was the fact that Jinxx and Jake weren't right with him fighting over the bits that were almost burned like they normally were.

“Where are the guys?”

Andy finished crunching one last bite before he answered.

“Belated Valentine's day breakfasts in bed.”

Ash blinked then snickered.  If anyone _ever_ said Jake and Jinxx weren't romantics to the very core of their souls he'd laugh right in the speakers face.

“CC even warmed the syrup up.”

Ash couldn't help it, he cracked up.

Andy just smiled at him.

“Dumb ass.”

Ash cuddled Andy and accepted a bite of bacon.  Who needed a silly holiday as a reason to spend time with the man he adored anyway?

 


	13. Ups and Downs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The people you know may have secrets, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. At least not as long as no one outside wants to take advantage of them.

Bill was scared half to death.  Tom was too, but he was hiding it better behind a veil of bravado.  Gustav was recovering in the hospital and now a large number of things they'd thought were odd had an explanation.

But Gustav having been outed as a lycan didn't have a whole lot of bearing on the fact Georg was missing.

Whoever had hit Gustav with a car had stolen Georg.

Tom was spending a fair bit of time at Gustav's bedside as the lycan had a bad case of the fidgets and only having someone there kept him from getting out of bed, shifting until his broken bones had fused and going off hunting whoever had stolen his brother.

And apparently the fact he'd called Georg 'brother' had some connotations with the local police.  It had them activating a whole other section of their forces anyway, something that left Bill both grateful and somewhat peeved.

Why did it make a difference what species you were, if you had a loved one missing shouldn't all personnel be involved?

Then he spun in place where he was pacing to start back across the floor and slammed into someone.

Someone shorter than him, but far and away more solid.

Someone with a ruffled crest of brown hair and very intent blue green eyes.

Bill opened his mouth to snap and found the words freezing in his throat, there was something wild behind those eyes.  Something he'd seen behind Gustav's a time or two and now had an explanation.

“Christian?”

Another man that Bill could only describe as square and solid.  Square face, brown hair, goatee, blue green eyes, solid in a way that echoed the first man.

Solid in a way that now that he thought of it echoed Gustav, even though these two men were both taller than his drummer.

The man he'd slammed into answered in a lilting musical language and gave Bill a crooked, not smile, more smirk.

“Oh for heaven’s sake you two...”

A slender person with long black hair, warm blue eyes and a smile that could only be described as sweet shoved both blocky men aside and wrapped a slim arm around Bill's waist to guide him toward a chair..

“Ignore the puppies, I'm Julian.  We're part of the Lovex Hunter team.  Has the local PSTaF lot gotten done making your head hurt?”

Bill blinked, but went and sat down.

“The police had someone who was trying to explain why Georg was taken, but it sounded so far-fetched, like something out of a movie.”

Julian's face went sad.

“I'm sorry to say it's all to real.  Christian and Jason are here to help your lycan friend settle and to help with the search.  Sammy, Vivian and Theon are checking in with the police and seeing what updates are available.”  There was a small grimace.  “What _we've_ learned is conflicting enough to be worse than useless.”

Bill let out a tiny hiccup noise and tried to find all the frantic questions that had been boiling in his head only moments before.  But they'd all vanished into a generalized mental wail that Georg was gone.

He wanted Georg back.

Gentle hands stroked his hair as Bill finally collapsed into helpless, half angry tears.

He just wanted his Georg back.

~0~

Tom glared at the two men who invaded Gustav's hospital room.  They didn't look like police, and didn't look or act like hospital staff.

And Gustav had stiffened and was all but vibrating in his bed.

They were bugging Gus, they needed to go.

He was just moving to throw the two out when one of them did something.  Something that made Tom's eyes _itch_ to watch.

It left him with one man and a large brindle-brown wolf sitting there _smirking_ at him.

The remaining man just sighed.

“Please forgive Christian; he's in a mood to tweak noses today.”

Tom felt his knees start to give, but he caught himself on Gustav's bed.

“He was a, now he's a, holy fuck it's real.”  Tom gulped and stared at Gustav.  “You can do that?”  The question came out wobbly, weak and sounding very scared.

Gustav held his eyes and nodded slowly.

“I'm a bit more blond,” Gustav offered slowly, his eyes never leaving Tom's face.  “But that's just a reflection of hair color more than anything.”

Tom wobbled and felt two strong arms catch him and ever so gently set him on the bed beside Gustav.

“Gently cub, I'm sorry to upset your world.  Yes, it's all very real.”

Tom gulped.

“Are, are you like him?”  Tom's eyes were still locked on the large wolf investigating the room by calmly sniffing everything.

The other man closed blue green eyes and sighed.

“Christian, don't even pretend, we both know you can't scent your way out of a paper bag.”

The look the wolf shot them had Tom giggling weakly.

“Yes, cub, I'm like him.  His name is Christian, I'm Jason.  I was asked to look over your friend as I'm a lycan healer.”

Gustav perked up and the conversation that followed left Tom feeling like he'd taken a very hard left turn into Wonderland and had thumped his head quite soundly on the way.

And the wolf, Christian, was laughing at him, he could just tell.

~0~

Explanations from people who weren't police helped a little.  The food and coffee the rest of the group brought with them might have helped more, but Bill wasn't going to admit that.

This 'hunter team' seemed very competent, the one who was flirting seemed to be doing so more to keep Tom distracted from how unsettled he was than from any real interest.  He seemed to be firmly attached to a slender man with black curly hair, and _he_ seemed amused by the over the top flirting.

He'd learned that Christian and Jason were lycan like Gustav, older and more experienced but the same general species.

And thinking of Gustav as not human was going to take some getting used to.

Bill had learned that two of the men were vampires, one of which was the man with the dark curls.

And _that_ had provoked Tom into making some very crass vampire jokes in his nerves but both men seemed more amused than offended.  But the slender dark haired one had cheerfully shown Tom a very healthy, very sharp looking, set of fangs and playfully asked if Tom wanted a test drive in the same tones a little boy used to ask for more desert after supper.

The other vampire had snorted and told them both to ignore Vivian as he and Theon were due a bit of time to renew their bond soon.

Bill hoped Sammy was right, Tom had gone white and nearly fainted in the shock.

Sammy also had told them why _they_ thought Gustav had been taken.

Apparently Gustav had known Georg wasn't entirely as human as he looked for a long time.

According to Sammy Georg was something called a potential, a human who had all the genetic markers to become something other than the common breed of vampire.  Common vampires apparently were something like vermin.  No longer human, no longer as intelligent as the humans that they had been before infection and virulently contagious through a bite.  These were the vampires that were the base for the legends of bloodthirsty predators who came back to slaughter their loved ones.  There were treatments, but unless you were very lucky or were a potential you usually ended up very dead.

High line vampires, like Sammy and Vivian, were something more special, more like the classic Dracula vampires.  Intelligent, charismatic as well as potentially brutally efficient hunters.

And Georg could become one.

They thought a group of lunatics had kidnapped him to try and force him to change into a vampire and then to do something out of a horror movie and make him their vampire slave.

It sounded impossible, like some plot from a very bad B grade horror film.

But Vivian and Sammy both knew how the ritual worked.

Bill had almost been sick, they'd both been victims of the horrible ritual.

This wasn't a nightmare, no matter how badly he wanted to wake up.

This was real.

~0~

I wanted to hug the poor kid.  Hell wanted to hug them both, but I knew neither one would accept it.  So I settled for flirting outrageously as Vivi tried to help explain in the ins and outs of the Brugerian rite to them.

Poor little Normal's, they hadn't even realized their drummer; someone they'd known for **_years_** was a lycan.

The one, Tom I think, is trying to wrap him mind around that.  Half the time he's forgetting and falling back into old habits, then he's remembering and freezing up.

It breaks my heart.  Gustav clearly is looking at him as mate material, there has to be a good reason, but if Tom can't get past the fact his friend can go furry any time he pleases it may be a match doomed to the pits.  I'm surprised, a lot surprised actually, that they didn't already know.  Way back when we got together as Lovex; just the band, not the Hunter team yet, we'd known that Christian and Jason could go furry.  It was handy when we were lugging our own equipment boxes around, let me tell you. Lycan are proportionally stronger than a human the same size.

Jules is keeping the other twin sort of calm, and I'm profoundly glad he's as good at dealing with hysterical people as he is.  Christian is buried in his laptop and Mikko is doing a bit of casual scrying.  It looks like he's staring into his coffee cup, but we know better.  He's better with a mirror, but the bronze one he's used the most absolutely will not work here, hospitals have way too much other crap going on that interferes.  One made of black glass might work, but Mikko hates working with them, and he's got good reasons.  _Things_ come out of black glass mirrors on him, so we don't ask unless it's a screaming emergency.

The down side with him scrying in coffee is that only he and Sammy can see what he finds, and doing two things at once has Sammy acting a touch abstracted as he tries to explain the rites he thinks their friend may have been snatched to be prime victim in.

I imagine that if they are thinking they might attribute that to how Sammy was made.

Shit.

Sammy and Mikko both just stiffened up.

“What did you find?”  Christian asks sharply without even looking up from his screen and the twins both looked startled.

“Find?” asked Bill weakly as Christian lifted his head to stare sharply at Mikko.

Christian kept his eyes on Mikko as he answered, ignoring how Sammy reached for Mikko's shoulder.

“Mikko can scry people and places using liquids.  And he just saw something.”

Mikko looked up and his eyes are haunted.

Oh, hell.  I know that look.

He gets that look when it's a place his sister used to use, I have a suspicion.  Were in southern France, and she had a wicked fondness for cemeteries filled with war dead.

This particular war cemetery we've been to before, so when he names it Christian is swearing and Jason has gone white.

Talk about a very bad place to go back to.

There are times I really hate France.

We're going back to the Normandy Beach Cemetery.

The place we nearly lost Julian.

~0~

Georg whimpered and struggled to not hammer on the coffin lid again, it was futile, he knew it was futile he'd tried to shove it away already and failed.  What he didn't understand was why he was still alive, sure they'd stuck a hose in this hell box, but it was only pumping a thin thread of cleaner smelling air.  He watched TV; he had to be getting short on air.  He also didn't understand why his stomach wasn't hurting like he thought it should be.  Shock maybe?  Or maybe he was shorter on air than he realized and his body was shutting down pain to try and hang on.

But then why did his hands hurt from where he'd hammered on the coffin lid?

He didn't know how long he'd been here, but he did remember getting grabbed.

He and Gustav had been walking to a small shop near the venue to track down some sweets for Bill and there had been an unholy screaming of tires.  Gustav had grabbed him and shoved him out of the street.

Something the men who snatched him had clearly been hoping for as the SUV then _hit_ his best friend and sent him flying as a team of men dressed in all black with their faces covered piled out and grabbed him.

They'd been rather less than gentle as they'd dragged him literally kicking and screaming into the SUV, but they'd never hit him in the head, covered his head with a nasty smelling sack, but never hit him there.

They'd tied him up and kicked him in the gut and the balls a few times when he tried yelling.

They'd driven for what had seemed like days.  He'd asked to be let out out go pee but had been laughed at.

He'd been hellishly uncomfortable when they had finally stopped.  They'd dragged him out and one had punched him in the gut.

Georg had been pitifully glad he had the sack over his head; that meant they couldn't see him all but cry as he was forced to urinate all over himself.

It got worse.

His clothing was cut off him and he was drenched in icy cold water.

Salt water.  He knew the smell.  Before long the repeated duckings had him shivering, and thinking he was going to die of the cold.

Only then had they ripped the sack off his head.  It was dark as hell and he was outside in a ring of torches.

Georg had only been able to see one face, a smirking man who would have vanished into any crowd he was so ordinary, all the rest had their faces obscured by oversized hoods that cast dark shadows in the torch light.

He'd screamed in pain when the head loony had knifed him.

He'd screamed again when they pulled his head back and forced a goblet of something that tasted sickeningly like blood down his throat. Burning agony lit from the knife in his gut and the back of his throat.

He didn't remember anything after that.

Then Georg had awakened in this coffin sized box with a small hose by his head that let in a bit of air and a bit of sound.

Drumming, chanting and hellish echoing silence.

He wanted to go home.

Wanted Tom to tease him about being a clumsy hobbit, Bill to smile at him, Gustav to challenge him to do silly physical things.

He wanted to wake up and to go home.

~0~

“I hate this fucking place.”

“I think we all do,” agreed Jason softy as he stroked a hand down Christian's spine.  “And yes, I wish Julian would have agreed to stay behind, but you know we're going to need him.”

Christian's eyes screamed how unhappy he was with that little bit of reality.

“If it helps,” offered Sammy softly from the front passenger seat.  “I got ahold of Jon.  The Brides have suddenly had a venue problem, so they'll be meeting us at the gate.”

Christian let out a low sigh.  Backup was always good, and for as young as the Brides team was they had killer teamwork and some serious firepower.

“It does, thanks.  They know what to expect?”

Sammy offered a tight smile.

“Jinxx said he's been teaching Andy the blessing Luminor uses.”

Christian winced.

“Good to know,” managed Jason after a hard swallow.

He seriously hoped they wouldn't need it.  But given what came out of this cemetery it was good to have a few spiritual equivalents to a tactical nuke on hand.

Jason knew he and Christian both were going to have nightmares of seeing Julian swarmed under by ghouls and shambling zombies no matter what.

~0~

Andy twitched when his phone pinged for an incoming text.

Ash smiled at him, then went back to checking his weapons.  Jinxx had already cast a soft blessing over their handguns and the ammunition they would be carrying.  CC still hated carrying a gun and had buried his face in Jake's shoulder for a moment, just long enough for the faint blue flare of light to fade away.

“Ready?”

Andy smiled at Jinxx's soft question and Jakes wry answer.  But he was always crabby when his knee was taped up, the tape pinched and pulled under his leathers.  At least they'd had enough warning to tape it up beforehand this time.

“No, but let’s do this anyway.”

Andy grimaced when he read the text.

“How bad?”  Jinxx was asking as Ash was already cussing under his breath.

“Twenty, and a summoner of some flavor.”

Jixx winced.

“Ghoul count?” asked Jake as he loaded another spare clip.

“None.”

Jake stopped and looked at him carefully.

“What?”

“None?  Mikko didn't see any on his sweep.”

Jake swore.

“I think that scares me more than the twenty with an unknown summoner.” offered CC softly.

“Tell me about it,” agreed Ash softly, it had taken six teams to deal with the last mess at this location.

Several teams hadn't made it out intact, Lovex had damn near lost their wardmaster, if Jason hadn't flipped and cast the uber blessing Luminor used they might have lost him.  Of course then the backlash of over-straining his powers had flattened the lycan healer for almost two weeks and kept both his bondmates bedridden in reaction as well.

Christian didn't do bedridden any better than Jake did.

Andy's phone pinged again, just as a pair of headlight pulled up and went out.

“That's them.”  Andy tucked his phone back into his inner jacket pocket.

“Show time,” offered Ash with a crooked smile

“Joy.” snarked Jake as he hopped out of the van.

~0~

“Well, hell.”

Jason had to stifle a snort at Jake's pithy observation.  They'd been expecting a complication, given that Bill had thrown a full scale diva fit when he was told that he and his brother needed to stay behind.  Gustav had seemed to expect it, but here was the young lycan in a cemetery in southern France, chained up and looking rather resigned.

Bill was pitching a fit, and was in epic form if Jason was any judge. 

Not that it was really _helping_ things much, except maybe as a distraction.  Bill was being held very securely by three very large men.  Men large enough that Jason wasn't sure how hard a fight he'd have had with each of them if he'd just been human.

He didn't see Tom, but he was fairly sure the other human was around somewhere.  If Gustav was here the more sensible twin had to be as well.

It looked like this particular nitwit was trying the accelerated version of the Rite.

Jason wished that didn't imply very bad things for poor Georg.  The standard Rite left the vampire victim knifed in the shoulder, fed a goblet of vampire blood to start the change and buried alive for a minimum of three days.

The accelerated version they usually were knifed in the gut, a wound the human could live longer with if a major vein didn't get nicked.  But it was ultimately a far more painful way to go.

Vivian remembered being knifed and dumped in the chest that would hold him until he was to mad with pain and blood hunger to stay still any longer.  Theon had been there, chained and terrified.  Vivian had gone into blood frenzy and mating frenzy almost simultaneously.

It had left an almighty mess behind.  But the Rite had ultimately failed.  It had also left Theon and Vivian bound together for life; Vivian's life probably, given vampires lived longer than humans normally.

Sammy didn't remember, but he'd broken out over a day ahead of schedule on his captors and reacted rather poorly to them trying to hurry things along by trying to kill Jason.  Having your primary victim chopping one of the celebrants to bits made the rite fail.  Having Mikko plug the primary celebrant with a large caliber slug ensured there would be no chance of a  redo to salvage things.

Sammy at least waited to do the mating urge until later.  Not _much_ later, but not right on the spot of the failed Rite at least.

Jason sighed and nodded at Jake's head jerk.

Time to start thinning the herds.

He shifted and started getting into a better position just as they hauled up the chest and kicked it open.

Bill's reaction was to scream Georg's name and struggle harder.

Jason moved.

He laid his ears back at the sound of Mikko's Sig Saur firing from overhead raining literal death from above.

He was _so_ glad Mikko was on their side, he had nasty aim on the fly.

Then the head idiot dragged Georg out of the chest by his bloodied hair, two minions moved in to hold the limp man up by his arms.

Jason hesitated for a long instant.

 _~Converting, not converted.~_ Came Julian's assessment from down the bond he shared with Jason and Christian.

 _~Fucking wonderful,~_ was Christian's rather pithy observation.  They'd rushed things to much, the Rite wouldn't work unless there was a converted vampire to tie into.  Something this idiot either didn't know or thought he had a way around.

Jason snorted and went after another target as Jake targeted one of the thugs holding Bill.

The lead bully forced something down a weakly struggling Georg's throat, to the sound of Bill's loudly screamed denials.

Jason blinked, a big golden wolf shape was barreling across the circle to take out one of the men helping keep Georg upright.

That meant Ash and Andy had gotten Gustav free somehow.  He spared a moment to scan for the Prophet and his partner.

He winced.

Someone had pissed CC off, rather badly.

There were a rather larger than expected number of black cloaked bodies lying on the grass with fist sized holes in them.  He hadn't even _seen_ the ruby balls of light that were the visible mark of CC's using his powers.  All to the good really, the holes could just come from an overpowered levin bolt rather than a peeved Destroyer.

Jason let out a low grunt as he felt the power kick of being near a heavily annoyed Prophet kick in, not that he was complaining, it let him dodge like a wolf a third his mass.  Rather useful in the sudden milling chaos or the head idiot trying to grab Bill or Gustav to finish the Rite he'd begun.  He smiled a bit internally though; being able to tap into that power well meant that at some level Andy had decided he was one of _his_ people even if he wasn't part of his immediate team.

Well, he had work to do.

~0~

Bill screamed and struggled.  Georg looked horrible; he was covered in blood and other unidentifiable filth and couldn't seem to hold himself upright.

A golden blond wolf had just taken out one of the men holding Georg upright and he'd collapsed in to a heap on the ground.

He was trying desperately to get to Georg's side but the two men still holding him had grips of iron and would not let go.

Then the man Tom had idly called the big ugly beckoned and Bill was getting dragged closer.

Bill suddenly found himself struggling to keep _away_ from Georg.

The man had a knife and was grinning at him in a terrifying way.

He didn't understand any of the words pouring out of the man's mouth and screamed in terror when he reached out and fisted his hand in Bill's hair so tight Bill's eyes watered in pain.

Then he understood a few words.

“You will serve.”

Georg reacted with a scream of negation.

Bill screamed.

~0~

Mikko firmly sat on Tom and swore under his breath as Sammy thumped the last of the minions on this side of the circle.

Bill had screamed in full on terror and Tom had tried to get to his brother.

It had been all Jinxx and Christian could do to keep Gustav from interfering and it was miraculous that Gustav was even on all four paws as badly hurt as he'd been before all this mess had started.

Mikko watched as the lead idiot grabbed Bill and Georg reacted.

Firmly Mikko turned Tom's face so it was buried in his shirt and he couldn't see.

Georg let out an unholy scream and the idiot was abruptly very dead.

Having one's heart yanked out of one's chest tended to do that.  Especially when the person doing the damage decided to go through one's back and take a sizable chunk of spine out in the process.

Of course then Jinxx and Christian let Gustav go so he could have the satisfaction of mauling the last minion.

Poor cub would be throwing up until he felt like dying would be the better option later, but he'd never go after another human unless he had no other options.

Just a killer way to learn a lesson most lycan never got faced with needing.

Bill crumpled to his knees and was reaching for Georg as the bloodied man stared at his hand and promptly collapsed in a heap.

'Geo?” sobbed Bill as he crawled closer and tried to drag the blocker man into his lap.

Georg managed a weak smile for Bill and closed his eyes as he rested his head limply on Bill's knee.

~0~

Bill pouted after the vampire legate left, he'd been indignant about how the man, creature, whatever had treated his Geo.

“He had _no_ reason to be so rude.”

Jason let out a snort as he continued wrapping Gustav's injured ribs.  A few shifts was hardly enough for them to have fused, so they were far from healed and still hurt rather badly.

“And his reaction to _Gustav_ , Gustav is our **_friend_** , not some flea bitten _minion_!”

Georg managed a wan smile, he was still tiring very easily as they'd been unable to get him enough blood to heal properly until he had been registered correctly.

Bill had been rather glad that the two groups of men that had helped rescue Georg had been anticipating that problem, and had been able to keep Georg from crashing in a way that would have had him locked up in a specialty padded room at the hospital until they could get everything fully sorted.

The PSTaF people were less than pleased that the leader of the little band of idiots had gotten very dead, but given that they'd been dithering Sammy wasn't terribly concerned.  The German Embassy was livid that one of their own had been turned by force.  Mikko had baldly denied any part of getting them involved, just because one of his linguistic research buddies happened to work there was purely coincidence.

No one believed _that_ for a second.

But with their government getting indignant on their behalf things were going a lot more smoothly for Georg.

Bill was still miffed that his word was dismissed as irrelevant by the legate.

Jason snickered when Bill started up again; CC was perched on the back of the hotel couch just watching with interest.

“If it helps he's just a dick,” offered Jake when he came back in with coffee for he and CC.

Bill's rant paused.

“He's that way to _everyone_?”

Jake nodded.

“Oh for the love, you _can **not**_ be _serious_?”

Ash made a very rude sound.  But he had a personal beef that that particular legate.  He'd been the one who had raised a ruckus over his somewhat irregular bonding to Andy.

Jason was rather hard pressed to not snicker at the offended face Bill made at the noises Ash made.  When Ash followed up the raspberry noise by sticking his tongue out at Bill he bit his lip.

“Seriously?  How old are you anyway?”

“Thirty going on three,” answered Andy dryly, which made Ash shoot him an overdone hurt look.

Bill huffed and turned a full force pout on Andy.

“So why was he such a snotty bastard?”

Ash sighed and settled at Andy's feet.

“He's one of these hyper controlling types, serious OCD.  If things don't go the way he thinks they should he flips out.”  Ash sighed again and let his head roll forward so his chin was on his chest as Andy began petting his hair and rubbing his neck.

Bill paused and watched, then frowned slightly and turned to watch how Jason and Christian bracketed Julian and the affectionate nuzzles and touches.  Then his eyes skipped over where Gustav was perched with Tom lurking protectively to rest on Jake and CC.

Jason rubbed his cheek over Julian's hair and waited as Bill was clearly processing things.  Sammy started to snicker and reached back a hand to Mikko and Jason swore he heard Bill's mind clicking over.

“You talked about bonding, the PSTaF idiot babbled about bonding, what exactly is bonding and why should I be remotely concerned?”

Jason smothered a snicker at the resigned look on Andy's face.

“Aside from now being registered, thanks to El Dick-o, as being bonded to Georg?”

Bill blinked.

“I thought that was a formality to make them let Georg out of that awful room.”

“Yes, and no,” offered Andy as he began to visibly collect his thoughts.  Jason was glad it wasn't him explaining this to the newly bonded man.  He'd about killed himself laughing when it had been Sammy trying to explain to Ash and Andy.

Bill let out an exaggerated sigh.  Georg sighed softly and reached out a hand to stroke light fingers down Bill's arm.

~0~

Bill is in denial, not as badly as he could be, but still in denial.

My brother has a mate.

I'm trying very hard to not crack up, but I grew up to the idea of someday having a mate, Bill had no idea until about a week ago.  And a week ago we were more concerned with getting Georg _back_.  Details of what would happen after that kind of got stuffed under the rug.

Georg is coping with the idea fairly well all things considered, but he's also been hopelessly in love with Bill for a long time.  He'll never tell but he's been kind of gone since we met a little boy with black spiky hair and his brother with blond dread-locks.

Bill is responding to Georg's gentle attempts to keep him calm as Ash and Andy explain, _again_ , what it means to be bonded.

They are good mates.  I can see it in how they look at each other and the easy way their body's settle together.  They know where the other is, and it's not all just having been paired for years, some of it is they have a good bond link.  I'm betting they can talk to each other down their link.  My sister can do that with her mate, it's a touch disconcerting to have her break up laughing at something he's said when I know he's on the other side of the world for his job.  On the good side it saves horrific phone bills, but it does make outsiders twitch a bit.

Bill blinks when Ash explains the significance of the feeding locations to him again.

Wrist for friendship, inner thigh for lust and throat for love.

Ash looks up at Andy and Andy just smiles at him and strokes a hand over his hair. I jolt upright when Ash catches that hand and presses kiss to the palm, but from the look in his eyes he means that gesture the same way my people do.  I have to blink again when I see Andy press two fingers from that hand to Ash's lips.

The devotion makes my heart squeeze.

I want that.

I want my brother to have that.

Bill is half glaring at Georg.

“Is that why you've been so careful about feeding only from my wrist?”

Uh oh, sounds like Bill has gone leaping off the cliff of hasty conclusions.

Georg gulps and I can see his heart in his eyes.

“I, I didn't want to rush you into anything.”  His voice is so small I can hear the regret echoing.  He's thinking Bill doesn't want him. 

It's possible for a Chosen to repudiate their vampire and break a bond as new as theirs is, but if that happens Georg will likely never bond again.

I know he'd try and stay in the band, but he'd gradually start doing things that are more and more risky.  Passive suicide.

I hope it doesn't come to that.

Bill stops and stares.

“You don't want to rush _me_?”

Georg nods and swallows hard.

Bills hands come up to cup Georg's face, and he repeats the words, more softly this time.

“You didn't want to rush me?”

“Don't want to hurt you,” blurted Georg.

Bill's smile is blinding.

“You idiot.”

I have to look away as Bill drags Georg over and starts kissing him witless.  Tom coughs and I can feel him fidgeting as he tries to both look and make sure his little brother is okay, and to **not** look as it's two boys kissing and he's still fixated on girls.

There's a scuffling and a strangled squawk from Georg followed by a door closing with conviction and a latch clicking to locked.

“And on that note, we should all probably be elsewhere,” said Andy with a sunny grin that left Tom looking blank for a moment.

Then he was blushing beet red as the penny dropped.

“Oh god, they aren't gonna?  That's my little brother in there!”

Jason and Christian catch Tom under the arms and Christian cheerfully informs him he really doesn't want to listen in.

He sounds like he's been unfortunate witness before, and from the flush on Andy's cheeks and the way Ash is grinning I'm betting it was their bonding.

CC comes over and offers me a hand up, and has an arm resting around my shoulders in a very casual way as we all migrate to just out of earshot.

I'm glad of the support, and how he makes it look like he's not helping me balance.

I'm also laughing inside at the black look Tom gives him when he realizes what's going on.

~0~

Sammy sighed and waited as Jinxx carefully teased the lock open.

They'd pulled the short straw for checking on the new pair, and Sammy's lock picking skills were nowhere near as good as Jinxx's.

At least it was silent.  Not like Andy and Ash's bonding where the timing had sucked balls and both men had been injured before Ash went into the mating frenzy.

Hearing Ash's screams as he realized he'd _hurt_ his Chosen was a heart-rending experience Sammy had no desire to repeat.  Even if listening to Andy yelling afterwards had been amusing as hell.

The lock clicked open and Jinxx pushed the door open.

Silence.

Jinxx crinkled his nose and Sammy had to smile.

“They went there?”

“Yeah.  But no serious blood smells, just the tiny traces I'd expect from a successful bonding night.”

That was good at least.

They crept in on quiet feet.

Bill was curled up facing them, his head on Georg's shoulder.  Georg had an arm wrapped protectively around the singer and had his cheek resting on Bill's hair.

As they got a bit closer one green eye opened and froze them in place.

“Wake him and die.”

Jinxx bounced a bit in place and Sammy couldn't stop the grin.

“When you are ready,” Jinxx offered in a soft, not whispering tone, “there will be food down in the kitchen.”

Sammy approved of the not whisper.  Whispering tended to wake him up _very_ fast as it usually meant someone being sneaky and thus a prank in the offing.

“Mikko made his chicken soup,” he offered as Georg pulled a bit of sheet over Bill's side.

Georg blinked then nodded, and then went back to making sure Bill didn't wake.

Jinxx grinned at him and Sammy grinned back.

Then they crept out of the room and quietly closed the door behind them.

~0~

Bill had a bounce to his step when he came down to dinner, it was far too late to even try and call it lunch anymore.  Tom was instantly wary of that bounce.  The last two weeks had been to full of insane ups and downs for him to be anything but wary of Bill's bounce.

He groaned and prayed for rescue when Bill began cheerfully letting him know about his evening, and about Georg's prowess.

He really didn't need to know how big Georg's dick was, or how well he used it.

Gustav seemed rather amused by his discomfort, but it wasn't his baby brother getting boned.

The only thing keeping him from wanting to punch Georg was the look on his face as he brought Bill a bowl of soup and a grilled cheese sandwich cut into neat quarters with the crusts trimmed off just how Bill liked them.

Georg was whipped, and he wasn't even trying to deny it. But Tom knew real devotion when he saw it.

Well, now that it had been shoved up his nose anyway.  He could look back and a million little things Georg did for Bill leapt out at him.

Then he jolted and sat up straighter.

Gustav did things like that for _him_.

His head snapped around to stare at the lycan.  After a moment warm brown eyes looked up and locked on his.

Holy fucking crap.

How the hell had he been so blind?

~0~

Bill giggled when Tom suddenly sat up with the look on his face that he'd always called the board to the skull look.

Looked like Tom had finally clued in.  Bill had been telling him for years that Gustav had a thing for him but Tom had always blown him off.

When was he going to learn that on relationship stuff Bill was right?

“He figured it out?”

“Mmm hmm.“  Bill was terribly smug, but melted into the arm Georg wrapped around him.

Maybe he shouldn't be too smug.

He'd almost missed out on the best thing in his life.

 

 


	14. Chocolate War Paint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Short and silly. Andy likes chocolate, and if anyone can find chocolate war paint it'll be Ash.

Ash stared meditatively at the little pots and had a long internal debate.

They were done touring for a little bit.

But it would still be war paint.

Andy liked chocolate.

It _would_ be fun.

He hefted one of the small jars in his hand and considered.  He’d had fun and made a huge mess with just the guts from one Lindt chocolate truffle.  Andy had had fun helping clean that up, at least the bits that had been on skin.  The couch he’d ended up taking a steam cleaner to and he could still see that marks.

There should be enough, and if he used the honey dust as a setting powder it might actually stay put long enough to mess with Andy's mind.

He grinned and scooped up the rest of the pots and grabbed a handful of unused make up sticks and headed for the bathroom.

“Ash?” Jake asked as he went by, but his voice trailed off uncertainly.

“What's he doing?”

CC leaned on his shoulder and watched through the open bathroom door as Ash scrubbed every bit of makeup off his face and humming cheerfully began to reapply it from the little pots he'd just gotten in the mail.

“I don't know.  And something tells me I really don't _want_ to know.”

“Pussy,” teased Jinxx as he walked past, but he only hesitated for a moment when his sensitive nose caught the smell.  Then he grinned and went hunting Andy.

After all he owed a certain fangy person a favor.  The strawberry powder for Sammi’s birthday had been inspired, and having the night to themselves had been priceless.

~0~

Andy blinked in confusion and stared at the door a madly grinning Jinxx had just slammed shut in his face.

The snicker from behind him had him turning in place.

“Is there a reason you are cackling at me?” Andy blinked. “Uh Ash?  Did I miss a call for an interview?”

Ash grinned at him and bounced in place.

“Nope.”

“Does this have to do with the furball going nutso?”

Ash paused in his bouncing and appeared to give that question some thought.

Andy drifted closer.  He knew he could mess with Ash's mind if he was close enough.  He was even learning to shield his intentions toward his bonded.

Not as well as Ash though.

“Um.... no.”  Ash grinned at him again and bounced closer.

“Ash?  Why do I smell chocolate?”

Ash's grin got impossibly bigger.

“Guess?”

“Uh-huh.  I think the band crazy is spreading... Whauk! ASHLEY!” Andy scowled up at his vampire lover from a position flat on his back on their bed.  Not that he really objected to the view, he just had the foreboding feeling that something was up and that when the prank hit he'd be Ash's cleaning bitch for a week.

But the sweet smell of chocolate was stronger.  And the color of Ash's stripes was off, not properly black enough.

He sniffed.

No way.

Andy grabbed Ash by the ears and dragged him down where he could lick a stripe up the side of the bassist's face.

He paused and considered the taste.

Honey, Ash and chocolate.

“Where, _exactly_ , did you find chocolate war paint?”

Ash just grinned at him.

Andy growled.  He'd get it out of Ash sooner or later.

And right now he was kind of hoping it was later.


	15. Vampires

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luna, musing on her Pack

“How can one short man make such a huge mess in such a short time?”

“You've never been around a two year old before have you?”

That got me a perplexed look, but I knew damn well Greg hadn't been around anything resembling a small child since he'd _been_ a small child. The way he talks about kids being vermin is kind of a hint that no self respecting parent would let their kiddoes within a kilometer of him. So I kept on sorting crumpled candy wrappers and empty beer bottles from things the band might want to actually keep.  Jyrki would probably want the skeleton leather jacket back, at least at some point; I’d worn it for two weeks last time before he asked for it back.  And Jussi I knew would want the rest of the bag of saltwater taffy.  We'd had fits finding the raspberry chocolate ones he adored so much.

“What's that got to do with anything?”

I couldn't stop the soft snort.

“One small child and one miniature chocolate chip and two seconds with no eyes on them will have you cleaning up chocolate smears for six months.  It's part of the Rules.” I sorted Bazie's handcuff belt out of the tangle of belt chains and set it aside, then got back to untangling the chains.  Timo would absolutely want his back, it still had his wallet attached and his wife would kill him if he lost another bank card this month.

“I think they're just lazy slobs.”

That had me lifting my head to glare at him.  I knew these guys, and knew damn well slob wasn't a usual thing for them.  Hell Jussi's place is clean enough to satisfy Martha Stewart even if the decorating would have her turning purple in horror.  I should know, one of my first memories of the guys other than the bus and on tour was living on Jussi’s couch and having Jyrki cover me with the pink furry monstrosity that lives on it.

“What?”  He gestured towards the disaster area that was also known as the changing room.  “How else to you explain this?”

“Five guys in a terribly big hurry?  If they didn't have a photo shoot and interview all bodged together this morning before any of them are normally even _awake_ they wouldn't have been nearly as messy.”  Behind me I can hear a faint but very distinctive snicker.  Not that I'm going to tell idiot boy we have an audience.  My comments are also true, normally things would never get this bad, but five guys in a very small space and in a huge hurry made a mess.  Normally they'd have been picking up by now.

“Five lazy slugs more like.”

“Not likely.”  I go back to sorting chains and find the ring Jyrki had been looking for, and slide it onto my thumb for safekeeping until I can give it back to him, with it out of the mix the rest untangles fairly easily.

“All they have to do is play music.”

I cock an eyebrow at him.  This is old and familiar territory.  I’ve been with the band almost six years now; I’ve seen this type of idiocy before.

“And you play exactly how many instruments?”  I'm trying to keep my tone level, but know I'm failing at keeping the caustic edge down when he shots me a wounded look.

“I don't, school band was for losers.  And it's not like you can play either, you're a girl.”

Okay, that's it.  It's a good thing I cut my fingernails short or I'd be bloodying my palms right now my hands are fisted so tight.

“I play.”

The snort was rude and dismissive.

“Tinkly little piano crap yeah?  All that girly shit.”

I growl low in my throat and feel the urge to change and rip the idiots’ throat out, but feel a strong hand on my shoulder.  The wolf in me settles a bit, registering I have Pack here to help deal with the threat.

“Luna plays drums, bass and guitar as well as piano.  And when Bazie got hit with food poisoning she stepped up and played his spot for six gigs.” Timo trying to play peacekeeper, and I can feel Bazie looming up behind me.

Food poisoning, yeah right.  Attempted murder is more like it.  Girl drank enough silver nitrate and garlic extract to damn near kill _herself_ then made sure to hurt Bazie badly enough where he had to feed or go feral.  She’s lucky the paramedics got to her before I did more than belt her one.  No one hurts my pack brothers.  I owe them my life a dozen times over; and Bazie more than that.  He was the one who found me.

We're lucky I was compatible enough to feed from or we might have had to cancel the rest of the tour.  And the guys’ being able to feed from me is a small repayment for all they’ve done for me.

Greg just flipped a hand dismissively.

“Like that's hard, stand there and look pretty, you've got all the stuff pre-recorded anyway.”

I only just keep Bazie from grabbing the bastard to wring his neck.  God but it's tempting to just let him go, but I have no place handy to hide a body.  Not like back home where I had folks who I could call who would help no questions asked.  Strange to think of Helsinki as ‘home’ now, but where the band is ‘home’ is to me.

But all the rage I can feel from my Pack is making it damned hard to not just change.

“Oh so that's how it is, you fuck him.  You fuck all of them?  That why a plain thing like you has this gig?”

I feel the change take over and the hand Bazie had on my side trying to gently shift me out of the way is now hanging onto my scruff reminding me to not maim in wolf shape.  If I was less pissed I’d be laughing about how it went from me restraining _him_ to him restraining _me_.  But his fist in my ruff was all that was keeping me from maiming this asshole.

Jyrki doesn’t like us maiming.

It's messy as hell for one.  And for another I don't think he wants to hold my hair back as I throw up after biting a human.  Humans taste fucking revolting.  And once I calm down I would be puking my breakfast up if I bit him.  Breakfast was a long time ago.

A moment later and Jussi is in front of me, both fists buried in the fur on either side of my jaw and whispering inanities to me.  His version of baby talk mostly, but given his face in only millimeters from mine and I'd _never_ willingly bite him it works.

That and he's the Alpha mate in my Pack, nevermind he and Jyrki consider each other brother and would never dream of fucking each other.

Then my Pack Alpha is there informing Greg that his services are no longer needed.  Security will shake him down and dump him on his ass well away from the venue.

All I have to do is find someplace else for all that rage and adrenaline to go.

Archzie has a way, even if it drives his human wife nuts.

He changes and mounts me.  Bazie just sighs and mutters there has to be a better way, but we both know that there really isn't a faster way.  Archzie is big, and he's got an unerring instinct for making sex hard, fast and oh so good.

At least I'm not fertile.  The slave harness they found me in sterilized me, which isn’t really a bad thing, cubs would be rather hard to explain.

Orgasm hits me, and then Archzie and both of us all but fall back into our human shapes, me panting and shaking, him with the stupid ear to ear grin he always gets after he's had to fuck me back to human.

But Jussi swats him over the head before he can tease about how tight I am and snuggles me close.  Jyrki comes back from dealing with the idiot and the management and kneels down by Jussi to wrap an arm around us both.

I just whimper and nuzzle up under his jaw like the good little beta wolf I am.  He just smiles and strokes a hand down my back.

I'm safe, protected.  I'm in the middle of my Pack.  My Alpha won't put up with anyone fucking with what's his.  Archzie may be wolf but he's part of Jyrki's kiss, and Jyrki will kill to protect his own.

My Pack.

Even if they are mostly vampires.


	16. Wax

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Refinishing a coat can be a touch challenging when your bond mate is a kinky bastard.

Ash swore under his breath, he loved his winter coat, he really did, but every three years or so he had to strip the finish off, wash the damn thing and redo the finish.

Washing was always gross.

After three years of touring, nightclubs, venues, cramped busses, smoking bandmates, dealing with paranormal slime, oozes demon blood and general ick the first run of wash water was always black.

Sometimes the second and third were too.  He'd learned though to keep washing and rinsing until the water at least had a semblance of clarity.  It didn't help that when soaked through a twelve pound coat suddenly weighed damn near as much as he did.

The guys had learned to avoid the house when he was refinishing.  The bathroom was perpetually occupied and the bathtub regrettable until the washing portion at least was over.  And this year he was using their Christmas holiday to do the refinishing.

Then it took at least a week to fully dry.  Sometimes two if it was humid out.

Then he had to melt the wax mix and refinish the coat.

Melting was easy, applying, not so much. 

Apply sparingly his fat red man ass!  If he got three swipes without having to re-melt the stuff it was a good day.

He also learned after the 'recommended' hair dryer and three trees of paper towels trick to use an iron and the rattiest towels in the house to really finish things.

He'd never forgotten the first time where he hadn't.

Andy still had the pictures of him frozen in his coat and unable to move due to the frozen wax coating somewhere.

Ash sighed and gloped a few more swipes on then set the pot back on the little electric burner he'd plugged into the bathroom outlet.  He'd learned to do this in as teeny tiny a thong as he could stand.  The wax would peel off skin just fine, clothing, not so much.  He had tied his long hair up in a fraying bun on top of his head in the somewhat vain hope that he wouldn't be carefully peeling wax out of it later today.

He winced when he heard a door close.  So much for getting the first stage of the messy done before the guys got home.

Ash felt his eyes go round when the bathroom door opened.

Andy, frozen in a moment of stillness, his hand still on the latch looking at him.

“Hmmm, Merry Christmas to me, that's a _nice_ view to come home to.”  Andy's head cocked over to one side and his smile went a touch lecherous.

Ash closed his eyes and let out a pained sigh.  Just his luck to get caught in an almost worn out Eeyore thong.

Andy chuckled and stepped in, closing and locking the door behind him.

Like that would really help with Jake and Jinxx around.  Both man and lycan had taken up lock picking a very long time ago.  A locked door was a neon sign screaming 'something interesting here' to both.

At least he'd almost been done.

Ash squeaked when Andy picked up the brush and gave it a meditative look.

“Andy.”

“Hmm?”

“I'm not done with that.”

That collected him a look that he knew meant trouble, Andy's blue eyes lit up with the mix of lust and mischief that normally meant a fun, if exhausting, night.

“No?”

Ash wished he could take a step back, but standing in the tub he was rather trapped.

He also really wished Jake's jab about 'big bad vampire, total pussy when the mate wants something', was a bit less accurate.

Andy dunked the brush back in the wax and swirled it around a bit.  When he pulled it back out Ash gulped.

The next noise he made was an embarrassing squeal.  His nipples were rather sensitive, not like CC's where he could come just from having them played with, but more than enough that Andy had fun torturing him.  And hot wax over the nub set his nerves jangling.

“Like that?”

“Fuck, Andy!”

Andy grinned and swiped wax over the other nub.

Ash let out a plaintive whine, but knew at this point he was pretty well screwed.

That didn't keep him from trying to snatch the brush back.

Andy chortled and dodged, swiping hot wax down his shoulder.

A few more attempts and Ash had wax over both nipples, down one shoulder, across his belly and on both thighs.

Then he slipped and landed on his ass in the tub.

Andy had been in a thin t-shirt and his oldest and rattiest pair of jeans, and clearly had decided they could get scrapped just for this.

Ash's butt had just bounced off cold porcelain and he had a singer in his lap.

He edited that to a _horny_ singer when he could breathe after Andy kissed him.

Then he yelped when Andy got rid of the thong by simply snapping the pathetic bits of elastic holding it together.

“ohhhh _shit_.”

Andy grinned at him and dabbed the brush back in the wax.

“Andy, baby, please,” Ash screamed when Andy shifted back enough to paint a smooth stripe up his cock.  He followed that up by peeling the wax off one nipple and fastening his mouth over it.

Ash writhed, both hands going up to tangle in Andy's soft black hair.

A repeat of the move on his cock and other nipple had him giving up thinking in favor of begging.

Begging for _what_ he wasn't quite sure, but whatever it was he knew Andy would make it good.

Eventually.

~0~

Jinxx came back home, quietly content after a week with his birth pack, his mate and their two cubs.  He froze half in the door of the house the band shared.

He knew that smell.

He sniffed again and grimaced.  He'd forgotten Ash was refinishing that damn coat of his this week.  A quick check of the bathroom confirmed it.  There was the coat hanging over the bathtub coated in a gloppy layer of the wax mix that waterproofed it so well.

Joy.

That meant in three days Ash would be at it with a hair dryer and paper towels, then an iron and the pile of towels deemed to tatty to go to the animal shelter.  Then he'd be after it again with the hair dryer.  Only then would Ash be happy and the damned thing would be good for another three or four years.

Then he paused and sniffed again, more carefully.

Was that?

Jinxx felt his eyes go round and abruptly turned on his heel and all but ran back out the door, startling CC and Jake as they were coming up the walk.

“What do you suppose?” started Jake.

“Dunno, but if Jinxxie is running away I do **_not_** want to go in there.”

Jake winced.

“Good point.  Sushi?”

“Sure.”


	17. Origins : Meeting Lillith

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just because something has a terrifying reputation doesn't mean it's as nasty as people think.

Quiet.  It was too quiet.  Ash lifted his head and listened intently for any sounds.

He could hear a few birds cheeping away, so that meant it was daylight outside, but inside the building all he could hear was echoing, ominous silence.

He let out a low groan and levered himself up and out of his nest of warm blankets.  A quick scrub at his eyes cleared the worst of the sleep out of them and let him look into the dimness of his own personal space a bit more clearly.  Boots were right where they had fallen when he'd kicked them off, the skinny jeans still in a rumpled pile by the bed, his vest in a limp heap beside them.

He sniffed, the room smelled of his body spray and cologne and a bit of sweat and come, but nothing out of the ordinary.

He didn't smell coffee.

Ash swore under his breath and groped for a looser pair of jeans and a t-shirt, once he had skin covered he trudged out into the hallway.

CC's kit bag was dumped neatly in the hall by his door, up close to the wall where it was mostly out of the way and wasn't likely to trip anyone on their way to the bathroom.  Hugging the wall nearby was a hard case for one of Jake's guitars.

Gently Ash nudged the doorway between both articles open.

Tangled in the bed were two dark heads of hair.  Ash stared a bit to decipher which was whose and smiled a bit lopsidedly at how CC had buried his face in Jake's throat and how the guitarist had nuzzled his nose into the mess of CC's hair.

Cute.

Not that most folks would consider a Destroyer any kind of cute.  But very few people knew what CC was and just thought how he and Jake lived in each other’s pockets was adorable.

Jake's ex ranting about how he'd drive another lover out of their minds with his hovering didn't clue anyone in.  Even the registry people didn't believe Jake was a full on Mourner, even with all the red flags of his behavior shoved up their noses.

Ash pulled the door closed again.

If they were going to be idiots on this one thing he wasn't going to complain.  It made keeping CC safe that much easier.

He padded down the hall on light feet looking for the rest of his team.

Jinxx he found crashed out on the ugly couch, his laptop resting on the coffee table screen saver filled with brightly colored digital fish.

On the notepad by the laptop Ash saw a name and a series of numbers.

He grimaced.

They'd managed to keep missing meeting Linke and the Panik team face to face.  Neither team was comfortable with the idea of the other, still unknown, group in their personal territory so all the failed meetings had been relatively neutral territory.

The last one had been in a coffee shop that had been in the process of getting robbed.

That alone was bad enough, but the idiot doing the robbing was a newly made vampire who had no freaking clue what the fuck he was doing or what had happened to him.

He'd felt Ash and freaked out, grabbed the nearest barista and used the poor girl as a human shield, at least until Andy started talking him down.

Of course then Jinxx showed up late, the kid freaked again and this time at least he'd left the bystanders alone as he'd run as fast as he could away.

Ash and Jinxx had followed as Andy, Jake and CC had dealt with calming the frightened staff and went through the formalities of dealing with the authorities.

The police hadn't been best pleased, even with them having all the proper permits and licenses for what they did.

There always were a few who were convinced that Hunter teams were more of a menace than what they hunted.

Being fair there _were_ teams that were more trouble than the monsters and had the attitude that anything they did to the civilian population in the process was just acceptable collateral damage.

Andy didn't think _any_ collateral damage was acceptable, at least not as far as lives were concerned.

And in the end that was what had gotten he, Jake and CC off the hook with one Officer Ambelsides.  That and his more experienced partner knew Jake and Andy as okay guys as he'd worked with them on a kidnapping case that had started looking like the poor girl was stolen as a sacrifice to a demon and ended up being a much more mundane parental snatch.

Ash had caught the poor stupid kid and Jinxx had called for High Line backup to get the kid registered and into a proper program to help him adjust.

The kid’s girlfriend had changed him.  The Powers had **_not_** been pleased, she'd gotten punished but the kid was coping, working nights and dating someone who wasn't as prone to impulsive non-consensual acts.

Ash gave himself a quick shake to get away from the woolgathering.

Sandra he knew was with her mate and their two boys today, and he resolved for the hundredth time to figure out how one sterile female and one fertile female ended up with twins without any male help.

Where in the hell was Andy?

Ash prowled the whole of the Tower, from the rooftop walkway to the second sub-basement, and came up empty handed.

That left the apartments, or one of the nearby coffee shops.

He sighed and went hunting his sneakers and his keys.

~0~

Andy grinned into his coffee cup.  David was acting like _such_ a complete air head, but he knew damn good an well it was an act.  No one could possibly be as fluffy and clueless as the man pretended to be.

He had to admit though, that absent minded musical genius was an excellent cover.  He'd be surprised if anyone thought the poor man could tie his own shoes without Timo there to help.

He did wish he had the rest of the guys here.  It felt a bit odd to be one against six, even when the six were friendly.

Andy winced at the prickling feel of irritation down the bond he had with Ash.  Clearly someone hadn't checked the fridge for messages again.  Not that this meeting was precisely _planned_ in any way.

“You okay?”

Andy managed a crooked smile for David.  Air head, _yeah_ , not so much.  Observant as fuck and brilliant though, and Andy suspected not just at music.

“Yeah, just the other half is being a grumpy butt.”

Timo narrowed his eyes.

“You have a full contact bond then?”

Andy blinked, but nodded as he took a delaying sip of his coffee.

Linke cocked his head and appeared to be looking right through Andy, something he found a touch disconcerting.

“How long have you been bonded?”  Jan asked with a little bounce.

“About six months,” Andy turned in place with a smile for the owner of the voice that answered.  Ash was there and the simmering feeling of annoyance bled down to a low level worry warting.

“And you can track each other by feel already?” Juri sounded surprised.

Ash let out a rude snort and stole a sip of Andy's coffee, made a face and handed it back before heading up to the counter to get his own.

“Less tracking by feel, more he knows my habits,” Andy offered with a fond smile for his vampire.  A double caramel macchiato with a double shot of espresso and a heavy swirl of chocolate was a bit much first thing in the morning. Ash had a sweet tooth, but his was more on the lines of peppermints, dark chocolate and his ever present gum.

Ash was back in a moment with a large cup of black coffee that he adulterated with plain cream and sugar.

“We have _no_ coffee in the house,” Ash grumbled with a gentle stroke of a hand on Andy’s thigh under the table.

~0~

Linke tried not to smile at the complaint about no coffee in the house; that had been the major reason why they were out en mass this morning.  He'd had tea, but only he and Juri would drink it.  Jan, much as he loved them, wouldn't unless he was in the throes of a major caffeine withdrawal headache.  David would crinkle his nose and Timo would grouse about sludge.

Frank still hadn't gotten enough juice of the blessed bean into his system to be coherent; he was still impersonating a zombie.

He watched as the other two men exchanged a speaking look, one that screamed of love and affection to anyone paying any attention at all.  Then Andy brushed a bit of hair out of Ash's face.

Ash caught Andy's wrist and dropped a quick kiss on the palm of Andy's hand.

The jolt of surprise he got from Juri's end of the link made it hard for him to not wince in reaction. The echoing silence from Jan didn't help, it made Linke feel a bit like he'd just had a bell go off in his head and it was echoing.  But lycan had a whole different set of social norms, something that he kept having rise up and slap him in the face even after almost six years bonded to both of the idiots.

He'd seen both his lovers get caught screwing around in public and not bat an eye, but the one time a fan girl had caught Juri kissing Jan's palm and posted the picture on the fan forums both had been blushing about it for _months_.

Juri's grandmother had eventually explained it to him after she'd caught him checking every reference he could find be it good, bad or laughably horrible.  He'd been getting frustrated at the lack of a sensible answer.

Sex was just sex, be it for fun, for procreation or to assert dominance. A kiss to the lips was more intimate, a show of loyalty, friendship and affection. Nips to the throat could be dominance or a declaration of partnership as well as reinforcement of bonds of affection.  Offering one's throat to a lycan was a show of trust and faith as well as a show of loyalty.

But a kiss to the palm was rather like a display of absolute loyalty and love.  The ultimate gesture of I will kill for you and I will die for you.

And from the looks they shared, that was the intent behind this kiss, in spite of the fact neither man was lycan.

It left Linke feeling a touch uncomfortable.

Then a pair of brown eyes caught his and Linke blinked to see pure mischief light them.

He knew that look, even if he normally saw it lighting Jan’s blue eyes.

“No.  I don't care what you are planning or how funny it will be, no, just _no_.”

Andy cracked up.

“You say that like you know him as well as we do.”

Linke jumped, Jan jumped and squeaked and Juri snapped his head around to stare.  David squeaked and hugged Timo's arm tightly enough he yelped and almost fell out of his chair, and that made Frank squeal and jump.

Andy just laughed harder.

“A bit of warning would have been nice,” Linke snarked at the lycan at the table.

“I didn't see him,” protested Jan.

“And I didn't smell him.”  Juri's eyes narrowed as he looked at the lycan they knew was named Jinxx, even if they'd never met face to face before.

“I showered,” jibed Jinxx with a very human poking out of his tongue.

“Why is smelling him such a big deal?”  Frank still hadn't had enough caffeine, if he was asking questions like that of lycan.  But Juri just cocked his head and answered as he scrutinized Jinxx.

“Mystics have a peculiar musk to them.”

“Oh, is that why you smell different?”

Juri closed his eyes and thumped his head into his arms with a low groan.  Jan just began to giggle.  A moment later and David was giggling like a lunatic as well.

Linke just sighed and quietly thanked any listening deity that lycan had evolved past the need to sniff butts and snarl at each other to establish identities.

“I guess laughing is a good thing,” observed a tall, almost painfully thin man with dark hair and eyes.  He smiled and offered his hand.  “Hi, I'm CC, Jake's off getting us coffee.”

Linke took the offered hand and blinked at the feel of contained power.

“Christian Linke, call me Linke.  The laughing twins are Jan and David, the guy groaning into his arms is Juri, our zombie impersonator is Frank and the other sane person is Timo.”

“You don't normally call me sane.”

“Normally you're sharing a brain with David.”

The one fingered salute was speaking.

Linke noted something else odd when Jake got back with coffee and a plate of pastries.

CC didn't eat or drink anything until after Jake did.  Jake had made a face after taking a bite of one jam filled pastry but CC's face had lit up when it was passed over to him.  They shared drinks, shared bites and in general looked like a pair of lovers so stupid cute in love as to be faintly sickening.

The pair he would have expected that sort of behavior out of were being a lot more subdued.  Linke knew from personal experience that newly bonded pairs and triads took a year or more to fully settle.  He was impressed the two could keep their hands off each other for any length of time.

 _~He smells electric, like the air after a lightning strike.~_

Linke blinked but didn't react otherwise to Juri's observation.

 _~Ozone, not electric.~_

Linke closed his eyes at Jan's absent correction. He had fits still keeping a straight face when Juri gave Jan a purely mental raspberry.

His phone went off and kept him from having to explain.

What disturbed him was that all their phones went off within a few moments.

Then he read the message and gulped.

This could be very bad.

Lillith had been seen in the city.

~0~

“Why is Lillith so important anyway?” asked Jan, who didn't pay much attention to Nephilium other than the one attached to Timo.  And David was hardly a typical example of the species, if there even was such a thing.

“Aside from the fact she's old, really scary powerful and her motivations are completely unknown?”

Linke smiled, Ash could snark with the best.

“Don't forget the Guardians don't mess with her,” reminded Andy absently as he read the notice more carefully.

That was news.

“Wait, Guardians?  Capitol 'G', defenders of the innocent, and have the magical equivalent of a tactical nuke in their arsenals if they _are_ defending the innocent?”

“I wasn't talking about gargoyles, so I don't know any other type Frank.”

“Wow.”

“In-ter-est-ing.”

“Juri, I hate it when you drag interesting out like that, it means bad shit.”

Linke snorted, but wished Timo wasn't right.  Juri dragging out words was up there with Jan or David going 'oh shit' in terms of fecal matter hitting the oscillating unit.

But Andy looked to be buried in his phone, with Jinxx reading over his shoulder and making faces every so often.

“I wonder why they don't go after her, they normally don't have issues taking out rampaging Nephilium,” mused Frank, now caffeinated enough to be making sense

“According to the one we know, she's never targeted anyone who didn't richly deserve it,” offered Jake softly.

“But, she's taken out Hunter groups,” protested Jan as his thumbs flickered over his phone's keyboard.  “Last incident was, whoa... September twelfth 1996, she took out three hunter groups; fourteen men total, in Helsinki, Finland.”

“They were using a school full of kids as bait, Jan.  If you want details, talk to Sammy Black of Lovex, he and his team have run into her more recently.”

Ash blinked and looked up into the stares six men.

Linke watched him, he wasn't lying.

He was hiding something though.

Linke flipped through his phone contacts and did a bit of mental time conversion in his head.

~0~

Sammy groaned and groped for his phone.

“Mitaaa?”

“Sammy, what do you know about the Nephilium called Lillith?”

Sammy groaned and squinted at his clock.  It wasn't as early as it felt, but he'd been up to the wee hours of the morning chasing down a redcap.  He groaned again and flopped back into his bed, his _empty_ bed, Mikko was off early today to do some research with Theon at the University.  It took a minute for him to be able to access his English where it would be coherent.

“Don't piss her off, don't shoot first and for the love of all little gods and demons don't target little kids.  Linke, _why_ are you calling at this unholy hour?”

“We just got a Nephilium alert.”

“With Lillith's name on it.”  Sammy groaned.  Oh, this was going to get messy.

“Yes.  And Ash said you ran into her a bit more recently than her last official sighting.”

“Meaning the US DTRS has its head up its ass still.  She's been formally seen a dozen times in the last ten years.”

The wry sound Sammy knew was a chuckle, but Linke wasn't best pleased with the demon tracking and reporting service of the US, saying they were _a bit_ slow was like saying honey was sticky.  Fortunately the services tracking vampire, lycan and other sentient non-human entities were a bit more up to speed.

“Sounds like it.  Ash says Guardians don't mess with her.”

“Linke, no one light pathed with a working _brain_ messes with her.  She's a bit like a tsunami or tornado when she gets going, just she can choose which house to wash away and leave everything around it untouched.  And you guys finally stopped playing coffee house tag?”

A rude snort.

“More like we tripped over Andy this morning and the rest of his team toddled in like ducklings.  Juri is grilling Jinxx on how he hides the smell.”

Sammy let out a snort of his own.

“In other words he snuck up on you.  If you get it out of him let me know, Jason never managed while they were here.”

“Goodie...”  Linke sounded un-enthused.  “Any advice for if we run into her?”

Sammy winced, but he knew if they didn't at least appear to be searching for Lillith they could get into some hot water with their own reporting agencies.

“Be polite, and don't lie to her.”

“ ** _Joy_** , she's like David then.”

“David will guilt you into telling the truth, she just tends to skip right to smiting.  And trust me, you do _not_ want her smacking you one.”

There was a long silence.

“Good to know.”

“Linke, she doesn't talk much.  Mikko said it's something to do with her Curse, only the innocent and pure of spirit seem to be able to hear her.”

“Well, **_fuck_**.  _That_ complicates things.”

“Tell me about it.  Have Frank or Jinxx log into Theon's research page.  Thee's got the notes from our last 'chat' up there in the Nephilium folders.  He's off at the Uni with Mik chasing something, so he may or may not respond to a chat ping.”

He didn't have to see the other man's face to read the grimace, but the gratitude in his voice was sincere.

“Thanks Sammy. We'll ring you later.”

“Better,” Sammy teased, then the line disconnected and he frowned down at his phone.  What in the nine hells had Lillith active in Los Angeles when the last logs had her in Tampere?

~0~

The distress of the Chosen called to her, but the pain of so many innocent made it difficult for her to home in on the one who called.  She knew it was just one, not like last time when it had been three children, two in mortal peril.  Her heart ached and she still wished she could have just stolen them all away with her.  She had checked them, found them all to be men grown now and one with a child of his own.

She'd been pleased to see he wasn't repeating the mistakes of his mother with his son, the child was loved, treasured and when she'd appeared had been utterly fearless in the way only the truly innocent who know nothing but love can be.

Jonne had almost had a heart failure when he'd seen his son chortling in delight and pulling the feathers of a creature the authorities said was a Class A danger to society.  But she had rather made a mess of the school he and his older brother had been attending.  But he'd looked into her eyes, and to her joy he could still hear her.

He'd asked something, before he'd just wanted the safety of his brothers, this time he begged help for a man he loved like kin, to help him find himself before he destroyed himself.

She'd smiled at him, kissed his forehead and left his son with a Tear of St. Gabriel in reaffirmation of her promise.

Then she'd gone searching.

The child man she sought had been put aside when the call of a Chosen child in distress had tugged at her soul.

The child would come first; her promise for the other would have to wait.

So she searched.

~0~

“What have we got?”

“Other than DTRS guys shitting themselves in a panic?”

“Other than _that_ , yes, that should be taken as a given anymore.”

Andy ducked his head.  Ash and Linke in one room made the snark level go up to unheard of levels.

Frank flipped through his notes and the pile of newspaper clippings.

“Let’s see, six demon cults have gotten nuked to kingdom come, five kids have turned up on hospital doorsteps with the Mark of St. Gabriel on their foreheads,”

“Whoa?  What?”  Andy looked over at the other man and waited.  “The Mark of _what_?”

Frank raked his brown hair out of warm blue eyes.

“The Mark of St. Gabriel.  It looks like a lipstick kiss mark, but has more spiritual oumph behind it.”

“Okay, that's new.  I've heard of St. Gabriel's _tears_ , but not a mark.”

“Tears are rare here,” Frank started only to have Jinxx snort.

“They're rare anywhere.”  He passed a newspaper clipping over to Andy, is showed a child, who looked to be no older than two or three with a silvery kiss mark on his forehead.

“What's it do?”  Asked CC as he looked over Andy's shoulder to read what he could from the clipping.

“You know Lumi's demon killing blessing?”

Jinxx winced.

“Yeah, been hit with it.  Talk about a killer cure.”

Frank smiled wanly.

“Yeah, think that with no known casting, just a mark and fewer side effects.  And the little fact it's lifelong protection from demons unless the bearer willingly and _knowingly_ revokes it.”

Andy set down the clipping and stared at Frank, Jake let out a low whistle.

“That's a _lot_ of power.”

“It's normally set on kids, at least that we've found.”

“And five have been found in what, two, three days?”

Frank nodded.

CC let out a low whistle in distant echo of Jake's and sat with a thump on the couch beside Andy.

“That's a shit ton of power,” CC breathed in awe.

“The powers are freaking out because they don't know who's setting those marks, anyone who can add one and one knows that with Lillith in the area she's the most likely one doing it,” Linke tone was acidic, but he'd been dealing with the panicked DTRS rep most of the morning.  “But no one can tell those idiots that, she's Nephilium and to them that's a half step down from Beelzebub himself.”

“Beelzebub doesn't like eating children,” came the odd remark from David.  “To sicky sweet most of them.”

Andy cocked his head and shared a look with Ash.

 _~Yes, that was random. No, I'm not asking.  I really don't think I want to know.~_

Andy snickered, but sobered quickly.

“Do they think the kids were taken from the Demon cults?”

Frank shrugged.

“I would think they'd have to have been, but given none of the kids is talking, most aren't old enough to really answer questions, no one knows for sure.”

“ **Fuck!** Fuck, **fuck** **_fuckity_** _fuck_ you fucking **fucks!** ”

“Timo?” David went from perched on the arm of a chair by Frank to the other room where Timo had been flipping through the news channels on TV.

Jan was on his heels and his barely breathed words made Linke close his eyes and swear.

“Oh, shit.”

Then their phones began ringing.

~0~

Linke hated his vest, but knew he'd never have been let on scene without it.  He was somewhat relieved to see the rest of both teams were similarly encumbered, although he knew the ones the lycans wore were missing the ceramic shatter plates the humans vests had.  And the layers of silk weren't quite as effective as real kevlar.

But real kevlar was so much scrap if a lycan changed while wearing it.

He found a very freaked out officer, one with a familiar face shielded behind a decorative concrete block at the top of the main staircase by the front entrance to the school.

Officer Ambelsides was wisely in his own personal armor and was clearly scared half out of his mind.  At least he wasn't scared stupid, Linke gave him credit for that.

“What have we got?” Linke asked softly as he eeled up beside the young officer.  This was far from a usual school lock-down or standoff.

“Some guy tried taking his kid from school, but they have a stop order from the wife because of a divorce.  She's got custody right now because there's documentation he hits the kid and hit her.”

Linke frowned.  That hardly sounded like something to call in every Hunter team in six counties for.  Not that his team didn't deal with their share of domestic type disputes, just theirs tended to have demons involved somehow.

“So why call us?”

Ambelsides gulped, but to his credit he gave Linke a coherent answer without stuttering too much.

“According to the school secretary when the guy pulled a gun on her something came through the roof.  A big something with gray and black feathered wings, white hair and glowing eyes.”

Classic indicators of a Nephilium, well, the wings and glowing eyes anyway.  Linke was impressed the secretary had been able to give them information beyond wings, eyes and scary aura of doom.

There was a _reason_ angels always said 'fear not' when they appeared.  Nephilium sometimes could pull off the same trick of flooding bystanders with fear and awe.

“Let me guess, daddy dearest isn't a problem anymore?”

“We don't know.  The secretary said she was allowed to leave, but the, whatever it is wouldn't let her take the kid.  She said it called him 'Chosen' and wasn't letting anyone get to close.”

“Was the kid scared?”

Ambelsides didn't know; no one outside the school seemed to know.

And Linke winced when he heard the cries of what could only be the child's mother, half hysterical with fear for her son.

“Goodie, Nephilium, nut bags and hysterical normals,” he grimaced when he saw Andy wrapping his arms around the hysterical woman.  Better Andy than him, he never could deal with hysterics with anything other than cutting sarcasm or outright laughter.

Not the best options right now.

A flash of something feathered down the central hallway had a trigger happy rookie loosing several rounds.

Linke gulped when he saw whatever it was tip its wings to form a protective shield.

It didn't wrap itself up in those wings like a demon would do, just dropped to a three point stance of feet and right hand and canted its wings, flight primaries up to shield the most area.

The bullets bounced off, mostly hitting the walls and ceiling of the hallway.

The things eyes glowed silver white and Linke gulped, grabbed Ambelsides and hit the concrete.

He dimly heard Juri's yell of 'hit the deck' and assorted swearing in several languages.

The blast that echoed back out of the hallway was a freakish mix of lightnings and wind driven dust.

He could hear some senior officer blistering the airwaves shouting at the idiot rookie over the earbud in Ambelsides ear.

“Are we dead?”

“Not yet.  Just, I don't think _shooting_ at it is going to help.”

“What are you gonna do, kill it with a sword?  We can't let it hurt that kid!”

The laughter made everyone stop and stare in shock.

“It's not funny,” but Ambelsides voice was weak.

“Not laughing.” offered Linke as he watched the creature rise, flip its wings back in a way he was all too familiar with from living around David and take a step forward.

She had white hair; the wings were gray up by the thumb claws and darkened until the flight primary's were black.

She wore black leather and was almost as slender as Andy, and was more androgynous than David.

Beautiful yes, but not identifiable as male or female exactly.

Linke gulped and rose, squared his shoulders and waited.

He just hoped Jan and Juri would forgive him if this got him killed.

~0~

One of the Children of Man protested her taking the Chosen away, he voice rang with fear, but also with sincerity, he only wished the child's safety.

Another rose, and his aura had the flavor of Michael's blood, those gifted to know Demons.

She cocked her head and looked at him more carefully as the Chosen crept up behind her and tucked his small hand in her larger one.

Michael's Child was bound to two Children of Earth; her curiosity had her reaching out.

A Child of Night was out there, and was bound to a Prophet.  She felt more Children of Earth, One Who Mourns and her breath caught.

He was tied, _knowingly_ tied, to a Child of Uriel’s sorrow.

Then she saw another, a younger cousin, masked by a seeming of a Child of Man.

Her eyes drifted past the woman who had born the Chosen, his sire having willfully cast aside his protections and broken his Promise.

Her eyes stung, so many cast aside the Promise, she had so few now.

“Is it crying?” asked one of the Children of Man.  Michael's Child squared his shoulders and answered.

“She, her name is Lillith.”

He stood his ground, as she moved out of the building and into the light.

She smiled, and got an answering smile, somewhat lopsided, and rather uncertain, but still a smile.

She scooped the Chosen into her arms and handed him over, staring into his eyes for a long moment.

Then she was in the air.

She had a promise to keep.

~0~

Linke blinked watering eyes and wondered at the weight of a child in his arms.

“Weren't you supposed to kill it?”  Ambelsides asked weakly.

“Guardians don't mess with her. I think I know why now.”

“Hunh?” 

I think you're going to need to talk to your PSTaF captain,” Linke offered with a crooked smile.

“Oh,”

Linke couldn't do anything to help as the officer fainted dead away.

At least he was still mostly flat on the ground.

~0~

Linke was profoundly grateful for the Hunter Obscurity Act; as it took hours to get through the mess of paperwork and the minefield of dealing with the public relations officer.

Kidlet was handed over to his mother after he got a good check over by the in house medical team.

Linke hated getting poked and prodded, but allowed it with as good a grace as he could, from the laughter down the bond, Jan and Juri had been far enough back that they were escaping the look over that was mandatory for folks who were closer.  A good dozen officers were suffering alongside him, so at least he was in good company.

Other than a few passing out like Ambelsides had done, none showed any signs of having been within the so called critical radius of a Class A entity.

He wished they'd just call her by her name, not it or the entity.

“We done?” he asked as the clinician stepped back with a low humph noise.

“Not quite Slayer Linke.”

Linke winced.  He so, so hated that title.

“Captain Hinojosa,” he offered with a tight smile.

It wasn't that he didn't like the man, he did, but the rules and regulations that the police Paranormal Services Task Force had to put up with routinely drove him batty.  He'd rather talk to Larry Hinojosa that he played pool with, and knew Larry felt the same about him.  He hated talking to people on a professional basis.

Worse when Larry brought things wrapped up in an evidence bag that clearly had something wrapped in silk inside it.

“Dare I ask?”

“Sit down Chris,”

Well that was a bit better; this wasn't going to be the unholy grilling he'd gotten over why when he'd been in arms reach of Lillith he hadn't tried killing her.

Linke sat back down on the edge of the gurney.

“One of our techs picked these up where our Class A took off.” He carefully pulled the wadded silk out and delicately unwrapped it.

“Holy,” breathed Linke in shock.

Nestled in the silk were two pale amble drops, each a long as his thumbnail.

“We've tried having everyone on the force touch them, so far of three drops only one has found a home.  Ambelsides is in a bit of shock.”

“I can understand why,” offered Linke as his mind went into overdrive.  Only Lillith had been on that step other than him,  Ambelsides and a little kid.

Theon was going to flip; St. Gabriel's tears came from a Nephilium.

“We're working through all the Hunters, you’re the last of your team, and then we'll start with the Brides boys.”

Linke held his hand over the drops.  He knew better than to just grab, he'd gotten blasted through a wall once grabbing at one dangling from a chain around a little girls neck.

David still never let him forget about it, never mind that that particular drop had been black.

He felt the resistance right off.

“Not me.  Larry, these feel like a paired set.”

He got a nod.

“That's what the tech that picked them up said.  A single and a pair.”

“Marie?”

Larry smiled, but his wife was well known as one of the best sensitive scene techs the department had.

“Larry?  Did anyone find daddy dearest?”

Larry grimaced.

“I didn't tell you this, but it’ll likely hit the news tomorrow anyway.  We found him dead, not a mark on him, no magical residue, just dropped dead in front of the desk where the secretary last saw him.  Because of the kerfuffle Mike's got him at the head of the line for autopsy tomorrow morning.”

“Goodie, you couldn't pay me enough to take his job.”

Larry laughed.

“About half the department has said that.  Chris, keep in touch, just in case she turns back up.  All the intel we've got on her say she tends to watch over people she's been in contact with, if she turns up let us know.  The research guys are about wetting themselves in glee over the footage we got.”

Linke smiled, that was one promise he could keep.

He did notice Larry hadn't asked formally for _timely_ notification.

And a few hours delay could make a world of difference.

~0~

Andy was pacing in circles.  They'd been asked to hang around.

They'd given their formal statements, gotten the typed copies and handed back three signed copies, but they still hadn't been cleared to leave.

If CC hadn't been so nervous, it wouldn't have been so bad, they’d gotten surprisingly good coffee and Ash had charmed some nibbles out of a passing female officer, but CC had no reason to be calm in a police interrogation room.  Rationally Andy knew it was because there were so many parties involved.

Emotionally he was scared for his Destroyer.

“Sorry for the delay gentlemen.”

Andy turned in place to face a large, square Hispanic man with warm brown eyes and the peculiar logo only PSTaF personnel wore on his uniform shirt.

“I'm Captain Larry Hinojosa of the LAPD PSTaF unit.”

Andy managed to be civil and introduced everyone around. CC he notice managed to avoid shaking hands without making a fuss, but he was jittery enough, and it had been long enough since he'd actually eaten anything that they might just be able to claim he was wobbling due to low blood sugar.

“One of our techs found these on the scene, and with what we know about St. Gabriel's tears we know they need to find their carriers or bad things happen.”

 _~Ooohhhh Bad Things,~_

Andy slanted a hard look at Ash and got an unrepentant grin back.

“Just for that _you_ get to do the research,” Andy snarked, then blinked at the blank look on the Captain's face.  Jinxx snorted and rescued them.

“Don't mind them, bond's still settling and they forget not everyone can hear them.”

That made the man chuckle, but while he was clearly curious he didn't ask who was what creature.  He just pulled a plastic evidence bag from his pocket and carefully pulled the wad of white fabric out of it.

 _~Silk, wonder what its insulat... oh.  Oh wow.~_

 _~That does rather explain the remark about St. Gabriel's tears.~_ Andy could feel Ash's agreement as he hesitantly let one hand hover a few inches over the two pale amber colored drops.

He felt the slight repelling field immediately and stopped.

Ash made a very cursory attempt as did Jinxx, but when CC hesitantly extended a hand both drops leapt at him.

Andy figured he could be forgiven the startled squeal and violent lurch backwards and that Jake would be forgiven his instant reaction to try and get the things off CC.

The drops glowed almost white for a moment, with fine filaments reaching out to wrap around both men before flashing so brightly Andy was left blinking away the spots from behind his eyes.

“Wow.  Guys?  You okay?”

CC was trembling in Jakes arms, his face buried in Jakes neck as Jake crooned brokenly and stroked CC's hair.  Andy could clearly see one of the drop hanging on what looked like a silver chain around Jake's neck, and had no doubts at all as to where the other one was.

Captain Hinojosa rubbed at his eyes and winced at Jake's voice.

“Good gods, that was bright.”  He winced again at Jake.  “I hope you never get asked to sing at church.”

Jake managed a tight smile.

“I know better.  Cese?  You okay man?”

Captain Hinojosa frowned at how CC mutely nodded and clung to Jake.

Jinxx whispered something in his ear that made him grimace again and sigh sadly before taking a deep breath and putting his professional face back on.  Andy wished their cover story of recovering from abuse wasn't based so much in truth.

“That was all we needed.  I'll get you boys registered as Carriers and you'll get the papers in the mail in the next week or so.”

“So we can go?” Asked Ash.

“You can go.  Just keep in touch, the research boys are all but frothing at the mouth over the new intel we got today.” He checked his watch and made a face.  “Ghaaa, make that yesterday.  If any of the research team gets obnoxious just invoke Carriers Privilege and tell em to shove it.”

Andy smiled crookedly.

“Will do, now I think I need to get these guys where they can fall over.”

“You fall over too for a while; god knows we all need to after that.”

~0~

“So, that was Lillith.” Ash mused as he curled up on the ugly blue couch, all concerns about the other team knowing where they holed up having gone merrily out the window after the madness of the last few days.

“I think I see why Sammy said don't lie to her.”

Andy let out a rude noise as he handed Ash a glass of Seagram's and Mountain Dew then settled beside his vampire.

Linke quirked an eyebrow at Andy.

“Oh let’s see,” Andy snarked in answer to the unspoken question.  “Let’s lie to something that can read you down to the depths of your soul... Real smart.”

Linke smiled and toasted Andy with his mug of tea.

“So I wasn't the only one who felt it?” asked Frank from the depths of the recliner of doom.

“I'd have to say no.  I felt like something was weighing me,” answered Ash after taking an unhealthily large swallow of his drink. “And that was scary as hell.  Mikko doesn't scare me like that.”

“Nor should he.”

Ash yelped and only just managed to not dump his drink as he spun in place.

White hair, wings and pale gray eyes.

“How the fuck did you get past the wards?” Jake blurted as he stepped in front of CC.

“How the fuck are we all hearing you?” Demanded Timo when he registered all of them had reacted to her words.

“I walked in and they allowed my passage as I hold no ill intent to those as dwell here. And you do not fall under the burden of my Curse.”

David just sat there with wide blue eyes as a gentle hand stroked over his hair.  Timo let out a little noise of distress but couldn't make himself move in front of his lover.  It was worse when David's wings erupted out in a flurry of soft black feathers.

Linke swore and yelped when Jan kicked his ankle.

“So much for gently,” remarked Juri wryly.

Frank blinked. 

“Juri?  I don't think they're freaking out about David.”

Juri blinked, then his eyes went round just as Linke processed Ash's remark.

“Mikko's not Nephilium.”

“Mikko, son of Matthew son of Zerachiel, chosen to serve.”

“Oh, _oh **shit**_.”

Ash snickered at Jan's stunned words.

Andy sat up sharply.

“Wait.  Chosen to serve.  Is David chosen to serve?”

A blink of gray eyes

“David, son of Joshua, son of Remiel, chosen to serve.”

“I thought only the first generation Nephilium were subject to the edicts.”

“Edict.  Thou Shalt Serve.  All after _choose_ to serve.”

Ash blinked and a quick glance around showed him similarly stunned faces.

“'Thou shalt serve?' That's it?  Who do you serve, how do you serve?”

The smile made him feel a touch eerie.

“Thou shalt serve as is written.”

“That isn't an answer.” Andy said rather shakily as his hand reached for Ash's.

“Isn't it?”

“No.  It's not. Mikko's a friend, not some slave.”

The laughter shut Andy up faster than anything ever had in his life.  It wasn't mocking laughter, that he was used to, and knew how to deal with.  This was joyful.

“Thou Shalt Serve.”

Andy yelped and felt Ash's weight taking him to the floor; he could distantly hear other yelps as a wave of light washed over them.

When his eyes cleared he was flat on his back with Ash sprawled over his chest and both of them were drenched in Ash's drink.  He winced and looked around to see where everyone else was.

Frank hadn't made it out of the recliner. Linke was dogpiled under Juri and Jan, and Jan looked a touch squished between his lovers.  Timo was wrapped up in David's wings and David looked shell shocked.  CC and Jake were in a tangle on the couch and he could hear Jinxx asking if anyone got the number of the bus that had just gone through.

“Ow.”

“Yeah, what the fuck was that?”

“Something I'm glad has your address and not mine, ow.  Juri lemme up, you're squishing me and Jan.”

~0~

Seven plane tickets apparently wasn't an insurmountable request as only a few days after Andy plaintively asked for help from Sammy's team they had the full compliment plus camouflaged Nephilium in the living room of the Panik team house.

None of them felt quite up to going back to the tower without backup.

“She knew my lineage, hunh.  Interesting.”

“Is it significant?”

“Yes and no.  Hear me out before you blow a gasket Andy.  In the greater scheme of things no, we're all Nephilium regardless, the product of an angle loving a human, with only one known exception.”

“Who's the exception?” Asked Frank from where he was tending a large pot of stew.

“Lillith.”

“Figures.” grumbled Timo.

Mikko smiled as he kneaded bread dough.

“Why is she the exception?”

“She wasn't a child of love, if what my father told me is true she's the child of the Messenger Gabriel and a high power succubus, and he was _not_ a willing participant.”

“Ew.  Not nice.  I guess that explains why she seems not all there in the head.”

Mikko nodded.

“What I know is limited, based on what my father knew and the notes a few of us left behind after our earthly deaths.  She was bred as a sacrifice, but her sire came back for her at the moment of her birth, but because of her begetting she couldn't be carried into heaven.”

“Oh _that_ sucks.  Like she had a say in how she was conceived.”  Jinxx protested as he got a can of soda for Sammi out of the fridge.

“I agree, but that's what the few sources I have all say.  But she's taken more of her nature from her sire than her mother.”

“Thus why Guardian's don't fuck with her?”

“Pretty much.”

“Wait,” said Ash as he leaned forward on the bar dividing the kitchen from their living area.  “I thought demons; succubae included, were just fallen or cast down angels.”

“Depends on who you ask.  The Judeao-Christian sects all tend to say that.  But most older religions say there were things that didn't like humans here looong before the god of Abraham started taking territory.”

“Okay so that's the no side, what's the yes?” Andy dragged the conversation back to the original question.

“Physical characteristics and magical strengths and weaknesses.  I have black bat wings; David's are black but feathered.  I cook and have magical strengths in combat, especially on the defensive or when I'm acting as the rear guard.  My Fire skill set if you will.”

Christian sat up sharply.

“That's why you could limp away from fights that were kicking the fuck out of the rest of the team.”

Mikko nodded as he divided the dough into four neat lumps and dumped them into oiled pans to rise a second time.

“Exactly why, but some of those I still nearly didn't walk away from.  But back to the subject, my Air skills are mostly related to research, past scrying and the like.  My Earth and Water skills are negligible.  The only thing I do that's either is potion making. Yes, Jules, I _can_ call my music and my language thingie,” he crinkled his nose at Julian, and got a tongue stuck out in retaliation, “an Air skill, almost all of us with any of the lineages have at least music.  David has a _lot_ more Air magic than I do, but some of that can be laid at the feet of his human mother.  She had a lot of power that way, but she also could access water, almost all women can.”

Mikko shrugged and covered the loaves then went to wash his hands.

“Most of it is appearance and aptitudes, nothing fancy.”

“So like humans tending to look like their parents.” mused Jinxx.

“Pretty much.  There are exceptions I'm sure, but we don't breed as fast.”  Mikko stopped and chewed his lip before continuing.  “And we're noticing a trend.”

Andy looked up sharply as Theon and Frank both turned to stare levelly at him.

“A trend?” Andy prompted.

“Most of us that are bonding are doing so to someone the same gender as us.  Except for the one's bonding to fae-kin that pretty well takes us out as far as breeding is concerned.  And while our fertility with humans is higher than it would be with two humans, there has to be love for a child to take in the mother.  How Lillith's mother got around that we have **no** idea.”

Jinxx stared.

“Wait.  If one partner is Fae-kin, two women can have kids?”

“Or two men. Why?”

“Sandra.  She can't have kids, long story.  But ten months after her bond mate trips over her they have kids, two little boys.  It's been driving us buggy trying to figure out why and Jael has been playing coy and running us in circles.”

“And Sandra's been watching and laughing at you?” asked Sammy as he sidled in to collect a cuddle from his lover.

“Pretty much, it's funny to watch.”

Jinxx let out a strangled noise and shot Sammi a look that was part betrayal, part unspoken plea.

“No, I didn't know silly. It just makes sense given what I sometimes smell off Jael and her boys when they come over to play with Ian and Mark.”

“Oh.”

Andy cracked up at the chagrined tone to Jinxx's voice, and he laughed harder at how Jinxx meekly snuggled his wife and took being poked in the ribs.

“Speaking of Ian and Mark; how are the two little furballs?”

Ash tried to muffle a snicker in his glass, with only marginal success.

Sammi smiled at Jake even with how rude his question sounded.

“Shedding all over the house and wanting to know why they have to wear clothes when it's hot outside.”

“That sounds like some grown up lycan I know,” chirped Julian with an impish grin at Jason and Christian.

“Clothes are overrated,” groused Christian.

“I agree, especially on pretty girls.  _Hey!_ ” Ash yelped when Andy swatted him.

“No entertaining pretty scantily clad girls without me.”

“Does that mean I can if you're there?”

Ash squealed and ran like hell.

~0~

Julian carefully traced purely mental fingers over the wards of the Tower.  His blue eyes were closed most of the time, and those rare times they were open the stare was as vague as a blind man’s.

“In-ter-est-ing.”

“God, you say it just like Juri.” complained Timo.

Jason snorted and shot him a look of amusement from where he'd flopped over in wolf shape.  His nose had told him as much as it could until they moved deeper into the building and he wasn't about to keep changing back and forth between wolf and man as he had no desire to be bouncing off the walls like a hyperactive child on their own weight in sugar.

“It usually isn't as bad as when Juri says it.” offered Vivian as he waited for the Wardsmith to work his peculiar magic.

“Usually?” Timo shot back.

Vivian gave Timo a one shoulder shrug and a lopsided smile.

“There have been incidents.”

“Usually when Theon goes walking into places he’s been told to keep out of.”

“Hey!  Last time it was Sammy, not me,” protested Theon.

“Only because you tripped and pushed me.”  Sammy reminded mildly as he leaned against a section of the brick fence surrounding the property.  “Um, Jules?  Are things supposed to be glowing where I can see them?”

“What things?” chorused Andy, Vivian and David.  Theon and Timo both tried squinting sideways to see if that let them see things.

“I just see ward points,” offered Jinxx.  “They are glowing blue though and I don’t remember them doing that before, or them glowing so bright.”

“You can see the wards.”  Andy’s tone was flat.  After Jinxx nodded Andy sighed.  “Okay, how many folks other than Julian can see the wards?”

Linke put up his hand, as did Jinxx and Juri.  Sammy put up his hand as did Mikko.  No one else did.

“I smell something, ozone, but can’t see anything,” offered Jan, Jason snorted and when they looked at him nodded his furry head.

“I don’t see or smell anything I didn’t before,” defended Christian, holding up both hands as everyone by Julian turned to look at him.

Andy grimaced.

“Not exactly a representative sample is it.  Slayer, Mystics, vampire and mate.”  He stared blindly at where Julian was working.

“Do you guys think we could get Yu and Kiro to take a look just to see if they can see things?”

~0~

“Not that I’m complaining about a free lunch, but if Jules says it’s safe I’m not sure why you want me and Kiro to look at things.”

“Andy has a theory about why some folks can see the wards and other can’t,” said Ash as he waited for Jake to unlock the door.

“Having to do with bloodlines?  But that wouldn’t explain why Mikko can see them and David can’t.”

“They have different bloodlines,” reminded Kiro, tacitly agreeing with the trend of not mentioning what either man was.  “And wards traditionally are the purview of Earth, and David is about as much of an Air talent as it’s possible to be.”

“I’m telling him that you called him an airhead,” threatened Ash jokingly as they moved into the courtyard.

“Oh.  Wow.”

“They’re _blue_.”

“I take it both of you can see them then.”

“Yes,” answered Kiro as his eyes traced over things Ash couldn’t see.  “You had good wards before.  The foundation blocks feel very old.  I’m only seeing a few places that are _just_ in blue; most it’s just overlaid in blue.”

“What does color have to do with anything?” Jake sounded a touch annoyed, and Ash had to admit he was curious, but more importantly he could feel his hold on the armload of take out bags starting to slip.

“Uh, guys?  A little help?”

Lunch was rescued by Andy bounding out the door, not by Jake.

~0~

“Okay so back to my question.  What’s color got to do with the wards?”  Jake was nothing if not persistent when he wanted to know something.

CC though whimpered when Kiro said it was theory.  He wanted lunch, not theory.

“You know Chakra theory right?”

Andy nodded.

“Ties into why some aura colors go with specific talents.  They tried using aura colors to screen for Destroyers in the 70’s based on Ingrams color theories.”

Kiro nodded as he had his mouth full.

“It failed spectacularly.” reminded Mikko.  “Most vampires have a bit of red threading their auras, and all lycan mystics progress through all the colors before settling at their mature shade.  It’s why they warn for color bias by species in the better schools.”

Kiro nodded enthusiastically.

“His theory said demons would have red or black auras, when in reality their auras are more mudded than any given shade.  His theories only hold with a small percentage of humans, and given he was studying _monks_ , that doesn’t apply to the general population.”

“So wards?” prompted Jake as he refilled CC’s plate for him and passed it back.

“Wards are about the only place where color has an impact on results.  And even there you have species norms.”

“Lycan use green, gold and brown for protective wards,” offered Jason.  “Red and blue are used only on burial grounds and the mad.  We want to know if either starts wandering around.”

“Where in Vampires red is the more prominent ward color for alerts and alarms.” Sammy shrugged and reached for another spring roll.

“So our wards going blue doesn’t mean anything?”

“No, it means something with a lot of power laid their own wards over yours using yours as a template.  And from the feel of things I’d say they want this to be a protected space.” Julian grimaced.  “The only other places I’ve seen with blue wards are human temples.  Like Buddhist places, Christianity doesn't have many places where violence hasn't tainted their ward structure.”

Jake’s head snapped up as Ash and Andy both gaped.

“So this got turned into, what?  A sacred space?”

Julian grimaced again.

“That’s the closest I can think of.  Whatever overlaid things didn’t mess with the original wards, the old stuff is still there, still powered independently and the alarms will still work.  Just I think if something hostile tried to crack your wards they’d be in for a **_nasty_** surprise.”

“Nasty how?”  Andy asked, paying no mind to the fact he was about to have a mouthful of egg fu yong in his lap as his chopsticks relaxed in his hand.

“Think backlash bitch slap from hell.”

“ _Lovely_ , crap!” Andy shoved his free hand under his dribbling chopsticks and tucked the messy mouthful in his mouth before it made a bigger mess.  Ash just passed over a couple napkins, not laughing at Andy’s goof like normal.

“So, a good thing or a bad thing?”

Jake wrapped an arm around CC and Andy rolled his eyes at the cute.

“A thing, not sure if it’s good or bad.”

“Thank you ever so much for that _delightful_ answer, Yuki,” snarked Andy as he wiped up his small mess.

Yu just shrugged.

“You asked.  I mean what is the normal pattern for Lillith anyway?”

“She doesn’t seem to really have one,” offered Theon.  “I mean she seems to watch over certain families, and we’ve noticed after she stops there don’t tend to be any more kids.  But aside from that, she’s pretty random.”

“Watches over families, you sound like you know one.” hazarded Ash.

“We do.  Jonne Aarron’s family gets visits every so often.  He and his older brother were attending the school that had Hunters try and use it as bait.  But Tommi won’t talk about it, and Ville was too young to be there.  He was her last documented visit before she turned up here.”

Sammy blinked at the collection of stares.

“What?”

“He just, what, has her turn up on his doorstep and its all coffee and donuts?”

Sammy laughed at Jake’s caustic remark.

“I think it was more heart failure.  His son was pulling feathers.”

Jake and Yu both choked on their drinks and had to be saved from drowning by their partners.

“Tell me you’re joking,” demanded Andy.

“Can’t,” Sammy shrugged.  “Jonne called me right after she left and as if a new St. Gabriel’s tear around little Seppo’s neck wasn’t proof enough he had a wing primary as long as my arm.  Mikko turned it into a base protection potion for Jonne to paint on the walls of his new place.”

“The powers that be didn't confiscate it?”  CC ducked when Sammy looked his way.

“They've learned not to,” offered Vivian as he dished up another serving of snow pea leaves.

“Why?  There can't be that many floating around.”  Kiro accepted the container of fried rice and waited for his answer as he dumped spoonfuls on he and Yu's plates.

“They tend to go back to who they were given to.  And trust me Umeä Academy learned the hard way not to try and keep one when the professor it was given to retired.”

Jake looked up and leveled a look at Sammy.

“There's a story behind that.”

Sammy grinned.

“It melted a hole in the case that held it, the walls of the room and then the building it was in.  There's a line of sight **hole** , one as big as my arm, in the complex from that building through the outermost wall of the compound.  They can ward weather out but they can't repair the holes any other way.”

Jake gulped and Ash shared a look with Andy.

“Anyone hurt?”

Mikko answered as Sammy had his mouth full.

“No.  Lots of people scared silly, but every last one had moved out of the way for some reason before it went through.”

“For Irony?” chirped Vivian.  “That same feather is part of the collection of the Circle of Olso, the old guy left a lot of stuff to them in his will.  The most it's done is glow a few times, but no one seems to be able to figure out why it does that.”

“What about feathers from Nephilium who are killed?”  Andy cursed his own curiosity, but now he felt he had to know.

“They never last.  They go up in flames when the Nephilium does.  And that tends to be very shortly after death.”  Mikko shrugged.  “Father went up shortly after mother died.  And my sister went as soon as dawns light touched her.”

Jake frowned.

“So how did the feather your friend had last for you to put it in a potion?”

Mikko smiled and Sammy smirked.

“Jonne brought it to me and asked, for the protection of his son.”

Jake went silent at that and rested his eyes on CC long enough that the drummer leaned into his side for a long moment.

~0~

“So, what do we know about St. Gabriel's tears?”

Ash had made sure to bring dark chocolate truffles this time.  And Sandra grimaced at him, but accepted the offering anyway.

“A lot of big fat nothing really.  Shit tons of speculation, very little useful facts.”

Ash groaned and flopped into the ugly couch.

“Great.  So us figuring out why Lillith gave one to CC are pretty much nil.”

Ash felt eyes on him and when he looked he found himself being speared by Sandra's dark eyes.

“Excuse me?”

“Um, crap.  I thought the guys would have said something.”

“No~oooo.”  The crossing of arms had Ash sinking deeper into the couch.

“The Nephilium alert a couple weeks back?  It was Lillith.  She left three tears behind, a single that went to one of the officers on scene and the other two were a matched set to Jake and CC.”

Sandra reached for her laptop and was typing furiously away a moment later.

“I wish you guys would tell me this shit.”

“I thought they had,” offered Ash meekly while trying to send reassurances to Andy down their bond,  The last thing he needed was two volatile personalities in one room together.

“They didn't.  Jael has the boys distracting Andy, so you can quit burning a hole in my wall.”

Ash flushed and faintly wished the couch would swallow him up.

“Physical characteristics range from looking like a drop of solid water to a drop of jet, size from six by nine millimeters all the way up to one that's thirty by fifty.  Things they have in common they offer protection to the person or space they are hung in or on.  The big one if in the Ceremonial Circle of the Icewind Pack on Tampere Finland.”

Ash jerked in his seat and Sandra offered him a toothy grin.

“Yes, that should be familiar to you, your lycan buddy Jason was born to that pack.  That one is blue.”  She turned the laptop around to show what looked like a huge prism made of brilliant blue glass hanging it apparent defiance of gravity over a simple earthen circle that looked very like the one he'd stood as witness in for Jinxx's wedding.

“According to the translation I can get for the pack legend the drop was given to the pack by a sky goddess in payment for a great favor.  Supposedly it was clear as water when they got it and has changed to blue and gotten richer in hue over the years.”

“So they change color?”

Sandra spun the laptop back around.

“I think they all have color to start with, just we cant see it, it's to dilute.  Over time use brings it out.  The major variations are blue, green and amber in the ones that can be tracked as having been in human hands for the last hundred years or so.  What color are the ones Jake and CC have?”

“Pale amber, like that straw colored topaz Jael had in her ring.”

Sandra nodded and kept typing.

“Given that those two are so co-dependent that it makes people look at them funny I'm not surprised they had a matched set.  And given how rare the blasted tears are matched pairs aren't as uncommon as you'd think.”

Ash cocked his head in silent question, and Sandra continued.

“I've found record of nine pairs in the last few minutes, all of them passed down in families. Mostly getting passed from one set of twins to a younger set, not necessarily parent to child.  Some are from married couple to newlywed pair.”

Ash let out a low whistle.

Sandra swore under her breath.

“Sandra?”

She looked up at him and turned the laptop around again.

Ash was suddenly grateful he was sitting down.

The picture was of CC”s grandparents.  Ash could see the brilliantly yellow drops on chains around their necks.

~0~

“Suddenly I feel like we should have been asking about CC's lineage, not David and Mikko's.”

Ash watched Andy and Jake pace.  CC just looked shell shocked as he read through the pages of family history that he'd had no idea about.

“No kidding.  All this makes my head hurt, and it's not _my_ family.  Ash, you knew there were vampires up your family tree.”

Ash snorted at Jinxx's not quite question.

“Of course.  I have two other relatives who are vampires.  One was my Grandfathers Uncle the other is a cousin who converted over when I was a baby.  Not a commonplace thing, but we knew what was happening when I started converting.”

“Sandra found records going back to the Conquistador's.  Well,” amended Jinxx.  “Back to the missionaries that went with them anyway.”

“Yeah,” agreed Ash.  “I don't know what I'd think to know my family had formerly been of the priestly caste and had provided willing sacrifices to Huitzilopochti and Tlaloc.  The idea of watching one of my sisters tie a big ass rock around her neck and walking out to jump into a cenote freaks me out a bit.”

“It implies something that I don't think people have considered,” mused Andy with an unhappy frown.

“What, that Destroyer's can be girls?”  Jake's voice was sharp in worry.

“That all this 'kill the Destroyer' might be a mistranslation.”

“Give all your empowered to me, means sacrifice rather than pull into the priesthood?”

“Yeah.”

“Something else to consider,” offered Sammi.  “Most of these sacrifices were intended to be messengers to the gods.  Sometimes the messengers came back.  Especially the cenote maidens. Wouldn't it make sense to send the most powerful to up your odds of them coming back with words from the gods lips?”

Ash shuddered.  That made _way_ to much sense.

~0~

Ash kept having nightmares where he was watching CC walk up and lay himself down on an altar, nod to the men who then held his arms and legs and smiling up into the face of the man who brought the knife down on his chest.

He'd woken up screaming three times in a row when the man in the feathered headdress turned to offer CC's still beating heart to the four quarters and he realized he wore Jake's face.

“Okay, this has _got_ to stop.”

Ash blinked at the light that Andy flipped on, and squeaked when his lover dragged him bodily out of bed and down the hall to the room Jake and CC shared. He nudged the door open to show both men curled around each other soundly asleep.

“See, safe and sound in their bed.  We have got to stop letting you eat Paulo's pepperoni death and read nasty historical accounts before bedtime.  What was it this time?”

Ash shivered and leaned into Andy's side.

“Same one, CC laying himself down on the altar and smiling up at Jake as he carves his heart out.”

Andy made a face.

“Just tell me we aren't helping hold him steady for Jake to carve on.”

Ash shuddered again and swallowed hard.

“Thank god, no.  I was on the platform though. And I couldn't do anything.”

“They're okay Ash, you know Jake would never willingly hurt CC.”

“But CC would _let_ him.  That's what scares me.”

Andy stopped and stared intently down into Ash's eyes.

“Ashley.  When you and Cese were hostages to the nutcase Vampire, did you hesitate to add your power to his when CC decided to take as many with him as he could?”

“No!  God no.  Better dead with them than in chains watching them destroy everything you are.”

Andy cupped his cheeks and rested their foreheads together.

“I would kill for you, and I would die for you.  You know Jake feels that way about CC and that CC would do anything to protect Jake.  If this crazy nightmare of yours happens you know damn good and well Jake would follow things up by cutting his own throat.”

Ash managed a watery smile.

“He'd never trust CC to go on without him.”

“So quit worry warting Ash.”

Ash managed a more genuine smile and cuddled closer to his mate.

~0~

Jake cracked an eye open and glared out the open door their room.

Ash had clearly had another nightmare.

He sighed and cuddled CC a bit closer to his chest.  He got a little grumbling sigh and felt a long arm tightening around his ribs.  The feel of warm lips on his throat made him grin into soft dark hair.

CC was up to something.

A gentle nip had him groaning and rocking his head back to give CC more room to work with.  Those sweet tormenting lips moved down, sucking on his collarbone, lapping at a nipple then raking down over ribs to suck hard on a hipbone.

Jake moaned and lifted his hips to help CC yank his boxers off.  His hands were buried in dark hair as CC smiled up at him and rubbed his cheek over Jake's straining erection.  All he could do was whimper a little at the rasp of stubble, then he was crying out in pleasure at the hot suction.

He had to grin at the strangled sounds coming from the hallway.

This was a perfect payback for all the times he'd had to listen to Ash and Andy fucking.

Then he was arching and pushing up into sweet tight heat as CC straddled his hips and focused on much better things.

Making his darling Destroyer scream his name for one.

~0~

She watched.

As ever she watched those that she was Promised to.

The wards were secure, they had been so before she'd come into their home place, but her workings would make them much harder for an outsider intending ill to dismantle.  Wards were much like snarled yarn, difficult if not impossible to untangle if you couldn't see the threads.  And she'd made it where it would be all but impossible to untangle things by feel.

She could feel the loving going on.  Feel the depth of affection, how the pair balanced each other as warrior and priest pairs had been intended to do so long ago.

She smiled and looked up toward the stars.

She'd kept her promise, now all they had to do was choose how they wished to honor theirs.

She spread her wings and lofted easily into the air.

Now she could finish keeping a promise she'd begun.

Christus was willing to see now.  And he had someone beside him who had Seen all he was and loved him anyway. 

She just had to show him.

And this time he would See the good in his own heart.


	18. Getting to There from Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a bit disconcerting to see one of your brothers faces on a MISSING poster, especially when you just had dinner with him last night...

Jinxx stopped, blinked and back-pedalled to look again.

That looked like CC.

He took a more careful look and read the text under the row of young male pictures.  The authorities were looking for any information on any of the young men.  But there was no explanation as to why they were asking for it.  Just saying they were missing.

 ** _That_** gave him a crawly itchy feeling under his skin.

He pulled out his phone, took a couple good close shots of the flyer and did the most sensible thing he could think of.

He finished his errands and went home to his wife, his twins and their high speed internet connection and did some research.

What he learned left him with a crawly creepy uncomfortable feeling.  Enough of an uncomfortable feeling that Sammi came and read over his shoulder after she got the boys to bed.

“So, they think this guy might have killed these boys?  But CC's fine, we saw him last night at dinner with Jake.”

Then her breath caught as Jinxx began clicking through some of the pictures.

“Oh my.  Even if he was the horrible pervert they claim he was, he was an amazing artist.”

Jinxx nodded and wondered why this woman was freaking out so badly.

Okay, her eccentric uncle had kicked over.  Yeah, she was going through everything to figure out what to keep, sell or donate and had come across a hidden room.  So the room was full of sketches, and oil paintings of beautiful young men.

Okay, so they were beautiful and mostly _naked_ , young men.  This was the modern age and southern California, nothing to spazz out about.  It wasn't like for all their searching the police had found the body of anything larger than a dead squirrel on the property.

But the woman was convinced, absolutely beyond a mortal doubt convinced that those pretty young men were dead at the hands of her deceased uncle.

Except Jinxx knew damn good and well at least one wasn't.

He shared a look with his wife and she reached over to where his phone was plugged in and grabbed it for him.

Jinxx took a breath and hit a speed dial.

“Jake?  I found something I think you and Cese need to have a look at...”

~0~

Jake hugged CC tight as the man wept open tears as he read the reports.

That in Jinxx's mind pretty well put paid to any fears of abuse from the guy.

“I got the deposit he always gave me on my birthday, I kept telling him I was okay now and he didn't have to but he'd just smile and say who else could he give it to?”  CC sniffled and wiped his nose on his sleeve.  “He hadn't found another model yet, and his niece was such a bitch he wanted to thumb his nose at her as much as he could.”

Jake sighed.

“Then we should probably have you talk to the police,” Jake sounded reluctant, but he hated putting his Destroyer under the spotlight of police attention.  And this case was already going so mad from the scandal of a well know wealthy eccentric and missing young men that it was turning into a circus.

CC scrubbed at his eyes and leaned back into Jake's arms.

“He was weird, but he just wanted pretty models, he never touched us, or made us do weird things with each other.  And he worried, it was nice, having someone, you know.”

Jinxx winced.

The more he learned about their drummer the more he really wanted to find a way to hurt the family that had thrown him out.  That CC had been desperate enough to accept the questionable help of a stranger made him sick to his stomach.

And it made him look at the affection CC had for his truck in a whole new way.

That battered truck had been a launch into life present from the guy.  He'd made sure it ran and would be reliable for CC even if it looked like hell.  But a truck that looked like crap was a _lot_ less likely to get stolen than a shiny new one.

“You knew some of these other kids?” asked Jake as he picked up the printed copy of the flier Jinxx had photographed.

CC wiped his eyes again and sniffled as he took the page.

“Yeah. That’s Mike,” he pointed to a fair haired young man.  “That was Jose, he tried getting him into rehab, but it never seemed to stick.  Carsten made sure he got an actual funeral, his family didn't care.  That’s Paulo, he's got a good gig with a documentary crew now as a sound guy.”

CC pointed and named another few of the faces and had a general idea of where they were, and Jinxx was surprised at how few were dead.  CC only knew about two, and one of those sounded like a genuine accident.

Andy had that look in his eyes, the one he got when there was bullshit going down and he only had a slight idea of how to fix it.

“I'm calling Jon; he can help us figure out how to shut this bitch down.”

CC nodded.

“She can't keep lying like this, Carsten was a good guy.  He'd never hurt any of us.”  There was a little catch in CC’s voice.  “He never hurt any of us.”

Andy hit a speed dial on his phone.

“Jon, you seen the coverage of the Jacob Carsten shit?  Yeah, Cese was one of his models and knows where a bunch of the other guys ended up.  No, most are all respectable.  How do we shut this bitch down without it blowing up in CC's face?”

~0~

Jake paced.  He hated uncertainty.  Especially where it concerned CC.

On the good side as soon as CC had gotten in touch with the team investigating Mr. Carsten's so called victims they learned that CC wasn't alone in coming forward.

To Jake's shock the lawyers for Mr. Carsten's estate were _not_ happy with his niece’s behavior, and apparently she'd tried claiming there was no will.

There _was_ a will, several identical copies of the will in fact and she was now at the center of the feeding frenzy she'd started.

There were nasty questions to all the models that had come forward.  But it very quickly became clear that the only weird thing going on was that the old guy had been painting pretty young men naked.  He'd done his best to help his models, but as far as Jake could tell he'd never done more than hug any of them.

That didn't mean the old guy hadn't had perverse fantasies, but apparently he'd never _acted_ on any of them.

What made Jake angry was that all his models had a similar background.

They all had no family, mostly due to said 'family' chucking them out on their ears for some supposed crime.  Being gay was pretty common, a good half of the guys who had come forward were gay or bi.  Of the straight ones, one had married a girl who wasn't of the same religion and another simply hadn't wanted to be a priest.  Another kid was a latent lycan and his family had freaked out and rather than handing him over to a pack to raise had dumped him on the street and moved away, so that even when he managed to get home there was no-one there when he got there.

The packs were less than pleased with that.

Latent kids were pretty damned rare, and when they got found they were always welcomed into a new pack.  Carsten had apparently been trying to get the kid into a pack when he died, and had never done more than sketch the kid in jeans.

Tomas was the last of Carsten's models and had been making a living at odd jobs, mostly gardening for some of Carsten's wealthy friends.  He wasn't admitting to where he slept, but Jake knew that was pure stubborn pride talking.

CC was just the same really, he'd been so happy to get a real apartment of his own, a place not shared with six other people.  But he'd been so ashamed when the rest of the band had realized he owned nothing new, everything had been used, thrift store finds or scavenged.

Hell, even the stuff they'd gotten him after they'd moved him in had been scavenged from careless college students who threw things away rather than moving them to a new place.

Jake gave himself a shake and watched the lawyer talking to CC.

The shocked sputter had him moving before he could stop and think, the lady was upsetting CC, she needed to go.

CC leaned into him the instant Jake got to his side, and the whisper stopped him dead in his tracks.

“They want us all at the reading of the will.”

“Fuck.” Jake didn't apologize, all his attention was on CC.  “It's just a formality right?  The estate is gonna get auctioned and everything's going to charity right?”

CC couldn't even speak, he just nodded.

Jake nodded grimly.

“I'll be right there with you babe, I just hope they pick some charity the bitch hates.”

He thought he heard a snicker from the lawyer, but when he looked she had a polite mask up, but her eyes were concerned.

“But, I don't even have a suit or anything.”

Jake smiled, that was his CC.  He took CC's shoulders in his hands and gave his love a gentle shake.

“Babe, would he care?”

CC blinked and scrubbed at his nose with his sleeve.

“No.”  He managed a watery smile for the lawyer when she offered a tissue and blew and wiped his nose.

“Would he have a fit it you went if full war paint?”

CC's smile was still a bit wobbly but was getting better.

“No.  He'd get a kick out of it.”

“Then we'll go in full paint and if folks don't like it, fuck em.”

That was a definite sound of amusement from the lawyer.

“I'll make sure we have the reading in the conference room that doesn't have the white leather couch,” she said with a nod.  Then she offered Jake her card.  “Christian has this but you should as well, right now things are set for next Friday at two.  If that changes I'll be calling both Christian and your manager.”

Jake blinked as he accepted the card.

“Thanks.”  He watched as she slipped back into a cluster of similarly suited people and shrugged.  He had a CC to cuddle.  “C'mon babe, I bet you forgot to eat again.”

“Kind of,” CC admitted as he snuggled into Jake's side.

“Silly,” Jake teased gently, “c'mon, there's a deli down the way that Linke gushes over.”

“Linke?  Gushing?”

Jake laughed as he herded his love out.

~0~

The assistant who was at the desk when they went in for the reading didn't even bat an eye at their war paint, she just politely escorted them back to a room full of other half familiar faces.

“They find everyone?”

CC nodded. 

“Everyone alive, well except Marco, he's in Belize.”  CC paused at the sight of a large computer monitor with a striking young man peering out. 

“That Marco?” Jake hazarded, that looked like a killer Skype set up.

CC nodded again, but his eyes were on a large scale photo print of the man Jake had learned had been a mentor, and in some cases savior, to every man in this room.

Jake scanned the small group with practiced eyes.  All of them were artistic sorts, from the camera and sound guys to the guy in the far corner who designed shoes.  Even the one guy in a mechanics coverall had said with quiet pride that he painted cars, Jake quietly resolved to see what kind of work the guy did.

The reading itself was pretty straightforward.

Each model was given the portfolio of works dealing with them.  A few had pieces of themselves and one of the deceased models and were given the option to sort out what happened to pieces that involved two or more of them.

Most of the group pieces were getting offered to an art gallery to be sold and the proceeds would go to setting up a scholarship to one of the local art institute’s.  Jake liked that idea, even if the three paintings he saw that had his CC with someone else gave him a weird feeling.  Everyone was given the option of adding pieces from the personal portfolios if they wanted to.  And Jake made sure CC didn't just hand over his right off like a few of the others did.

Then the real shocker.

The house and property would be auctioned and that money would go into the scholarship fund, just like Jake had expected.

But each surviving model got a portion of Carsten's wealth.

 **That** caused an uproar.

Jake found himself trying very hard not to laugh at the irony of every last one of Carsten's beneficiary's protesting that they _didn't_ need the money, even the ones who very clearly could use the financial help.

~0~

Ash looked up when Jake and CC came dragging back into the tower.  He'd been at CC's apartment when a very odd delivery had been made and had dragged Andy out before they both succumbed to the temptation that the large rectangular boxes wrapped in plain brown paper represented. 

“Well?”

“It went.  Was fucking weird man, but it went.”

“Weird how?” asked Andy as he padded back to the ugly couch and plopped down next to Ash and offered a dish of mandarin orange segments.

“People arguing about _not_ taking money.”

Ash and Andy shared a look then gave Jake a _look_ that Ash knew conveyed a thousand layers of doubt.

Jake held up his hands after he got CC settled in a chair.

“No lie man.  Twenty guys all yelling that Carsten had done enough for them and they didn't need more.”

“That can't be everything.” observed Jinxx mildly.

“That and a bunch of art, but dude I never thought I'd see it when the heirs to some fortune were bitching about getting _to much_ money.”

Jinxx blinked then cocked his head to one side before offering.

“Maybe it's a commentary on how well the old guy could judge character.”

Jake shrugged.

“Something man.”

Andy narrowed his eyes and watched how CC curled up into as small a ball as he could in the chair.

“How much money?”

CC gulped and tried to make himself smaller.

“Six figures to start with,” answered Jake.

“How do you get six to start with?” asked Ash before Andy could.

“Investments.” answered Jake as he started gently petting CC's hair.

“As in interest payments?” asked Ash.

Jake just nodded as he was more focused on CC.

Jinxx sat down with a thump on the arm of the couch.

“Well shit.” was all the lycan had to offer to that.

“Yeah,” agreed Jake with a sober look.

~0~

CC couldn't bear to unpack the artwork, so Jake had reluctantly accepting help from Linke while Jan and Juri kept CC distracted and out of the apartment.

Ash and Andy had come along just because Andy was incurably curious.

The low whistle from Linke though had Jake turning to look.

The art wasn't just sketches and paintings.  The piece that had Linke whistling in shock had Jake gaping.

It was a bronze, almost two feet high with CC kneeling and curling into the side of another, slightly shorter, man as he stood and appeared to be sheltering CC from something.  Both men were nude, but you really couldn't see anything with how the two figures were tangled around each other.

The work was superb, but left Jake with a twisting feeling of jealousy in his gut, at least until Linke turned the piece so he could see the face of the other man.

Then Jake was abruptly sitting on his ass on the carpet.

“ _Hoooo-ly **Shit**!_ ”  Andy breathed.

Ash just stared with eyes gone round in shock.

“You never met the guy right?” asked Linke softly as he set the bronze on the milk crate acting as an end table.

Jake shook his head no as he stared in shock.

The face on the shorter, sheltering figure was one he knew well.

He shaved that face every day.

~0~

Andy stared blindly at the biggest painting of the lot, one that depicted CC as an Aztec Jaguar warrior, clad in nothing but a jaguar pelt, an itsy bitsy loincloth and some feathers.

“Should I be getting concerned?” teased Ash as he settled beside his mate.

Andy jumped but then smiled.

“Nah, just thinking.”

“If it was anyone else I'd be asking if you needed a map and compass to find your way back.” Ash laughed when Andy thumped his shoulder in retaliation.  “Seriously, you've been getting lost in your head a lot the last few days.”

“You ever wonder how he knew?”

Ash blinked, but he knew what Andy was talking about.  One good thing about being bonded he now could almost keep up with his Prophets lightning quick thought processes.  Almost.

“Linke speculated that he might have had seer dreams.  I've asked Mikko and Jason and they can't think of any other reason.”  Ash didn't mention that Jason suspected Carsten might have been using his gift to pick the young men he chose to try and save.  Maybe not consciously, but at some level he knew which ones he could really help and which were doomed to fail no matter what he did.

“He did amazing work.”

Ash nodded as he looked up at the almost life size depiction of their drummer.  They'd spent the better part of three days paging through the sketches, finding the ones for the bronze they now knew was named 'devotion' and another group that had Jake seriously weirded out.

It depicted he and CC after an ugly fight.  Their leathers were a bloody mess, Jake had blown his knee, again, and both men were more concerned for the other.  It showed on their faces as they reached for each other and in the later sketches as they ignored the blood and the filth to hold each other tightly.

What had Ash a touch concerned was how many sketches there were of that last scene.  It was depicted from all angles and showed the two men staring into each other’s eyes, hands cupping the others face as they reassured themselves that the other was alright.

Ash _remembered_ that fight.

It have been one where the ghoul count had been more than a little off and had blown Jinxx's plans for a romantic Valentine's day dinner with his wife all to hell.  The only good parts of that mess, other than everyone surviving, had been getting to see the Lovex team and getting to laugh himself half sick at Theon's fit about the holiday.

But Theon hated Valentine's Day.

“You thinking we might just get a call about another bronze at some point.”

Ash blinked and looked back at Andy.

“I don't know.  That's the only other set of sketches like that,” he answered.  But I'd think that if it was a regular studio we'd have heard about them having the sketches by now.

Andy grunted and cocked his head at the painting.

“You suppose we could blackmail Cese into a rig like that for Halloween?  The fan girls would love it.”

Ash just cracked up.

“Babe, good luck.  I don't think we'll be getting there from here any time soon.  Jake gets all growly of the fan girls petting CC when he's got his pants on as it is.  Get him damn near naked and I don't think we'll get any work out of either of them.”

“Hmm,” agreed Andy.  “Pity though, that could be fun.”

“What could be fun?  Oh Christ, Andy? You still have that thing out?” groused Jake.

“Debating Halloween costumes,” offered Andy mildly.

“Oh **_hell_** no.”

Ash snickered at Jake's reaction.  That Jake started flailing to punctuate his repeated 'no's' was just more amusing.  And Andy wasn't done winding Jake up.

“It's no worse than stage gear.”

“The _hell_ it's not!  Cese has pants on with his stage gear, not his ass hanging out of a hankie!”

The argument continued for several passes until Jake was hopping up and down in his indignation about his baby being put on display like a hunk of meat.  But it took Andy seeing the fright in Jake's eyes about all of them dressing up in similar rigs before he abruptly changed tacks.

“You're still having that dream aren't you,” Andy's tone was flat, not teasing or even questioning.

Jake abruptly deflated and almost collapsed to his knees on the floor.

“Yeah.”

“I thought we had that one sorted,” said Ash with a worried frown he felt Andy sharing.

Jake looked down at his hands then up at them.

“It went away for a while, and it's not back every night, but...” his voice trailed off as he shrugged miserably.

Ash shared a look with Andy then they both moved to haul the other man up onto CC's scavenged leather couch.

“Jake, we know you'd never willingly hurt CC,” started Andy.

“But if it was a choice of me killing him quick and someone else torturing him to death you know what I'd do.”  Jake's voice was pained.

“And we know your next action would be to follow him.”  Ash wrapped an arm around Jake from one side as Andy mirrored him on the other.  “We **know** you.”

“It just scares me.  He just lays there and lets me, and,” Jake looked down where he was wringing his hands.

The front door clicked open and closed.

“Babe?” CC called sounding concerned.

“We're in here,” Andy called back, a moment later and the drummer joined them.  He all but dropped the bag in his arms into the chair and was at Jake's knee a blink later.

“Jake?”

“Bad dream.”

Ash blinked when he realized what must have happened, CC must have gone out for something while Jake had been curled up for a nap.  From the soft conversation he gathered that Jake hadn't been feeling the best, but he had been the one who had gotten full in the face sneezed on twice at the meet and greet last week.  That was about right if the girls who had sneezed on him had the flu, which he knew was hitting hard and early this year as Sammi had already gotten hit with the lycan variant.

Andy had let Jake go and peered into the bag.

_~No bets babe, Theraflu, that chicken soup stuff Jake likes and gatorades, the clear ones that aren’t nasty when you barf them back up.~_

Ash closed his eyes as he saw though his mates eyes.  Just the resigned tone of his thoughts was a big clue.  A sick Jake was a miserable bastard.  Not that any of them was all sunshine and roses.  He wished there wasn’t a vampire version, and that was all but guaranteed to get it having fed from his infected mate.

_~Fuck.  If Jake's got it we'll all get it in the next few days.  We should pick up and move over to the tower, and get supplies ready now.~_

Andy grimaced but nodded.  At least they were off this week and had only planned on doing a few pick up shows and work on new music.  If they were all in the tower at least they'd all be under better wards.

“I'll give Jinxx a call,” Andy rose and reached for his jacket and the phone he'd left in the left hand pocket.

~0~

Sammi sighed and was profoundly glad that she'd both gotten a flu shot this year and already gotten sick as the boys one by one fell ill.

Jake was a miserable bastard when he got sick.  All his Mourner instincts went crazy as his senses of smell and taste went haywire.  She was quietly grateful that he trusted her; if he hadn't this last ten days would have been purest hell after CC had also succumbed.

She was also glad she had a healer on speed dial and that Jason had a sense of humor about the crazy times her calls came in due to the time differences.

Andy was never going to let her live down the Skype cooking lesson with Mikko though.  But she'd been helpless to resist CC's sad brown eyes when he'd wistfully wished for Mikko's chicken soup.

On the good side she now knew how to make simple egg and flour noodles, though Mikko called them dumplings, and how simple it was to make stock.  It wasn't like the boys wouldn't eat the meat she'd pulled off the carcasses later as they got to feeling better.  And the biggest pot in the house made a stupidly huge batch of soup.  But she knew she and Mikko would be laughing about it later.  Jinxx was laughing weakly about it now.  Mikko's largest pot and the boy’s largest pot were a bit different as far as volume was concerned.

It also helped that Linke, Jan and Juri were willing to help, even if Timo pitched a fit and instantly had David sequestered away from all the 'plague carriers'.  Apparently the poor little Nephilium couldn't take a flu shot and had the unfortunate habit of becoming a hospitable home for any flu bug wandering in need of a home in winter.

She settled beside Jinxx where he was curled up on the ugly couch and stroked his hair as she took in a few rather interesting additions to the main living area.

Sammi hadn't thought the boys were into art, but she had to admit that the painter had been extraordinarily skilled.

But she'd have thought that the nude bronze of Jake and CC cuddling up together would have gone somewhere a bit more private.  Well, at least until she'd seen the oil Jake had in the room he'd claimed as his, even if he and CC were almost always together in it.

CC curled loosely in a ball and dead asleep in what looked to be either an incredibly fluffy pile of blankets or a heap of sheep fleeces.

She knew why they had them, but if these were what they'd kept it made her wonder about what they'd offered up for the auction.

But then she heard Andy start coughing again, and with Ash dealing with the vampire equivalent of the flu he was useless for keeping his mate in check, so she got up to make sure the idiot stayed in bed where he belonged.  He really didn’t need another round of bronchitis this year.

~0~

“Whoa,”

Jason snickered at Christian's unvarnished initial reaction.  But he had to admit the pieces they'd seen already were pretty impressive.

Pity the artist was dead, or he'd have been tempted to commission a piece with his mates curled up together.

Julian heard his thought and sighed before shooting him a chastening look.  But Christian was already off and running.

“I had no idea Cese was that hung.”

Jason sighed and looked up at the painting with CC in the same pose as the classical David statue.  Where the original statue had looked focused and almost grim CC's version looked slightly sad.  But he wondered if that was his knowledge of the man coloring things.

“Hey Christian?” called Theon from in front of another canvas.

Christian grunted to let Theon know he'd been heard as he cocked his head at another angle to stare at the picture in front of him.

Jason closed his eyes and sighed, he knew what was coming.

“Cese has a nice ass too.”  Theon grinned impudently at his mate as Vivian sighed and offered a speaking look.

“It's kind of a shame this one never got finished,” Jason heard Sammy muse softly and he turned to look.

The piece showed CC more like they knew him, younger to be sure, but dressed in black leathers and sensible boots, his hair hidden under a purple bandanna.  His eyes were still sad, but his face was determined as he stood back to back with another dark haired man, a small child protected between them.  In one hand he held the glock he used while hunting, the other he held cupped around a ball of amber light poised to throw.

CC was finished; the other man was still just a sketch, under-painting and unfinished details.  He was shorter than CC, and his hair was a familiar riot.  In his sketched hands were the two handguns that looked like the ones Jake habitually used, even if the second only came out in an emergency.  The child was just an unfinished sketch; they couldn't even tell if it was supposed to be a boy or a girl.

The scene around them was just a rough sketch of an alleyway filled with ghouls.

None of the other unfinished pieces had a name sketched on them; they'd all been named afterwards, either by the men donating them or by the people organizing the auction.

This one had a name sketched on the canvas.

Hunters.

Jason swallowed hard.  Change the color of the ball of light from amber to red and they were looking at Jake and CC the way they did when they got overrun by ghouls.

“That's just eerie,” offered Julian softly.  “Why did they think this was one of the others, it's pretty obvious the guy in the background is Jake.”

“No telling, but I think we need to get this, and we need to have Sammy copy it and finish it.”

Christian stopped dropping lecherous jokes and nodded his agreement.

~0~

“Why are we doing this again?” asked Ash as Andy went back to primping his hair.

“Because the PSTaF people invited us, and a shit ton of other hunter groups to add to the memorial?”

Ash grimaced.

“Ah, yeah.  **_That_**.”

He hated the publicity, even though he knew the wards for the secrecy statute would keep any pictures taken inside, or even on the steps of the building from coming out.  The nature of the wards would keep eager reporters from being able to even remember the names of the teams who attended.

Well except for a few teams who were public, and the teams where they _all_ were dead.

“Sammy was talking about some artist going spare over a painting they tried to get from the auction,” said Jake from where he was flopped in an oversized chair.

“Which piece?  And why were they trying to get it,” asked Andy as he sprayed another layer of hair spray over the fluff of his hair.

“Hunters,” answered Jake succinctly.  “Jason wanted Sammy to finish it.”

“Hunh, okay.  It's not like it could ever be displayed really,” Andy turned back around and swatted at Ash for some unheard comment.  Unheard by them anyway and probably perverted if the grin on Ash’s face was anything to go by.

There was a rap on the door and they sighed and headed that direction.  CC and Jake only reluctantly.

~0~

“Holy fucking shit,” breathed Jake in a mix of horror and awe.

“Um, yeah.” agreed Andy as he looked up at the piece that now dominated the central atrium.  He'd seen the cloth swathed statue coming in but hadn't paid any attention.

CC just let out a tiny squeak as he stared up at his own face looking out over the crowd with resigned sadness.  Jake's was glaring the opposite direction in frustrated determination, and between them a little girl complete with squashed teddy bear.

“I don't remember agreeing to that.”  Jake's tone was annoyed, rattled and under it all a touch afraid.

“Please tell me they aren't selling postcards of that,” Jinxx pleaded faintly.

“Free advertising, but holy fuck.  Not the kind we really need.” Ash laced his fingers with Andy's and waited.

The PSTaF people didn't look best pleased either.

Captain Hinojosa in particular looked more than peeved.

The artist looked impossibly smug.

Being fair he'd done an extraordinary job with the details.  Even managing to render out things that normally didn’t show well in bronze, like the blood and dirt smudging all three figures and the tears on the little girls face.  What was upsetting though was he’d used an LED globe for the ball of light in the statues right hand.  That alone was no big deal.

But he made the globe _red_ , and was justifying it as ‘looking better’ to all the grumbles about Destroyer red being less than appropriate.

“I think Frank’s about to blow,” came the mild observation from behind them. 

Jake just swore under his breath at Linke’s dry comment, and watched as one very annoyed PSTaF captain raged over not using _live hunters_ as figures for memorial artwork.

~0~

“They went with the backup piece?” Jan sounded curious.  “So what are they doing with the original?”

Linke settled on the couch between his mates and let Jan snuggle into his side.

“According to Frank since the city bought it they were able to spin it as being donated, so they are selling it to the museum that now has the original unfinished painting.”

Juri let out a soft noise, and then asked.

“How’s Jake coping with that idea?”

Linke snorted, but Timo beat him to answering.

“He fucking freaked.  How do you think he’s coping?”  Timo was in rare snarking form.

“At least they got that damned globe changed. Its amber now, just like in the painting.” offered Linke mildly.

“Like that’s gonna help with the artist wailing about things,” grumped Timo.

“At least the cover story is good.  The museum has a collection of hunter inspired art that they are putting on display.  Officially none of the people depicted is a hunter; it’s all just what ifs and whimsy of artists.” Linke finished, not letting Timo’s grouching stop him from answering David and Franky’s unspoken questions.  “CC seems to be okay with it, and he can keep Jake from flipping out to badly.  And given the artist is in an institution after being diagnosed with mercury poisoning we may be able to point and laugh and have it blow over. ”

Juri sighed and settled deeper into the couch and tugged at Linke’s shoulder pulling he and Jan closer.

“I wish him luck then, Jake freaking out is never fun,” Juri murmured into his mates hair.

~0~

Ash bit his lip trying not to laugh as Andy buried his head under his pillow.

“I can see if Jael will ward Jake’s room for sound still,” he managed to offer.  From the black look and unhappy mental growl that Andy shot him Ash knew Andy was unhappy with the reminder that he’d declined that offer.

He’d had a good reason, when they were injured the rest of the team needed to be able to listen for things.

Jake screaming for it harder wasn’t quite what they needed to listen for though.

~0~

When the racket stopped, and Andy had finally fallen back asleep, Ash crept up to Jakes door and quietly slipped in to check.

He found the pair curled up securely in each other’s arms. 

CC had his face nuzzled into Jake’s neck, marked with some livid bite marks, and Jake had his nose buried in CC’s hair.

Both had rather more marks showing than usual, from the bites that liberally covered both men’s necks and shoulders to the long fingers hand prints on Jake’s hips.

Ash just grinned and picked up Jake’s quilt and shook it out before he laid it gently over the sleeping pair.

Then he slipped back out the door, closed it behind him and scampered back to his own mate.

He didn’t see Jake’s eyes open, or the faint smile the Mourner sent after him before he snuggled CC tighter in his arms and went back to sleep.


	19. Wake Ups Calls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Japa learns some things about his best friend... and Kris (Sir Christus, Kristian) learns some things about himself and his family.

Japa stood shaking in the doorway to his own apartment and sighted down the handgun that Sammy had all but blackmailed him into getting.

The demons kin he was shakily aiming at didn't seem at all disturbed.  She just blinked at him and didn't even set down the battered coffee mug she held cradled in her fine boned hands.  Japa recognized that mug; it was one of Kris's favorites, even though they'd had to glue the handle back on the damned thing at least twice.

Kris just looked confused as he set the kettle he'd been using to refill his own equally battered mug of tea with.  Someday he had to find a way to get Kris to replace the stupid things, put them in a frame on the wall or something since they had sentimental value and use something that wasn't liable to shatter if you filled it and picked it up.

“Japa?”

“Kris, why is there a demon in our kitchen?” Calm, he had to stay calm; hysterics right now really wouldn't help anything.  But god help him he was grabbing Sammy next practice and having a nice cathartic yell about sharing information and how it would have been nice to know he was going to have a _demon_ coming calling.

“She came for tea.”

Japa wanted to slam his head into something, or smack the crap out of Kris.

Kris set down his mug and with no regard for the fact Japa had a loaded handgun pointed at him walked over and took the gun out of his hands.  He realized, a lot late really, that he hadn't even taken the thing off the safety.

“Her name is Lilith,” Kris continued as he firmly led Japa over to the kitchen table and pushed him down into a chair.  Right under the calm silver gray eyes of the demon.  She didn't look to be any more bothered by having had a loaded gun pointed at her than Kris had.

“But,” Japa tried to protest as Kris set about making a third mug of tea.  At least his mug was one of the newer plain white ones his mother had given him when he'd moved in here.

“Jonne apparently was worried enough he asked her to check up on me.”

Japa gulped and took a quick swallow from the mug Kris handed him, a burned tongue was minor compared to learning that Jonne Liimatainen knew a demon well enough that he could ask for favors.

His shock didn't end though; the demon reached out a hand and stroked it gently over his cheek.  His mother touched him like that, and normally he'd duck and grouse about not being a baby anymore, but he was frozen in shock that a demon would have such gentle warm hands.  Then Japa gaped when Kris cracked up laughing.

“Of course he loves me; he's my best friend in the world.”

Japa gaped again when Kris continued, just as if he was keeping up one half of a conversation.  But the demon's, Lilith's, lips never moved.

“He and Sammy have been great.  Yeah, I know it about killed Jonne, but he did the right thing.  No, no I didn't then, but now is different.”

“Uh, Kris?  Who are you talking to?”

The look he got was one Sammy called the 'idiot' look.  Sammy swore Kris had to have learned it from Jonne, or somehow had learned it from Japa's mother.

“Lilith, haven't you been listening?”

Japa felt a creeping shudder work its way down his spine.

Kris's eyes suddenly went round as he turned to Lilith.

“You mean he can't hear your?”  The tone of his voice was shock and a strange mix of elation and sadness. But the headshake from Lilith was clear.

Japa gulped and quickly drained his mug.

He was so killing Sammy; Private Line could find another singer, one that didn't have Seer weirdness going on.  One that would warn him if weird shit was going to land in his kitchen.

~0~

Eliaz sat down sharply and gaped at Japa as he paced and yelled at Sammy while flailing his arms in a very un-Japa like fashion.  Jack Smack didn't **_do_** rattled, except when he _did_ , and then it was in a _really_ big way.

He'd known Sammy was trying to nudge Japa into understanding some of what they did when they weren't recording, playing and touring with the band, but this.  Well this was unprecedented, and sure as hell wasn't what Eliaz would call a nudge.  A **_shove_** maybe, but not a nudge.

He blinked at the silvery mark peeking from behind the tumble of black hair on Japa's forehead.

Illy and Spit both had noticed the mark and had closed the door on their practice space so Illy's silencing and distraction wards would go up.

What Eliaz found interesting was that Japa had known what Lilith was right off, yes he called her a demon, but that was what Nephilium _were_ in common parlance.

He spared a fleeting prayer of thanks that Japa hadn't tried shooting her; that never came out well.

Something else he found interesting was that apparently Lilith had been pointed at Kristian by Jonne Liimatainen.  They hadn't known that Jonne's family was one the Nephilium watched over.  Clearly she was fond enough of Jonne that his asking a favor carried weight.

Good to know, even if he wasn't sure how useful it would be.

Eliaz jerked upright in his seat as he watched in shock as the door to their practice space opened.

With Illy's wards up no one should have even _noticed_ the door, never mind been able to **_open_** it.

His jaw went slack when Kristian slipped in and closed the door behind him.

“You guys done yelling about me?”

Eliaz sympathized with Illy's reaction.  Fainting right now would be kind of nice, but his eyes were stuck on the silvery mark Kristian also wore on his forehead and the thumbnail sized drop of pale amber that dangled on a silver chain around Kristian's throat.

One hell of a wakeup call to learn the kind of flaky best friend of your guitarist, the guy who had just come out of round two of rehab, was interesting enough that a Nephilium had planted not one, but _two_ high power blessings on him.

~0~

“Why are you so interested?' Jonne asked as he jiggled his son in his arms in an effort to get him to settle so he could be put down for a nap.

Japa sighed and fidgeted with his coffee mug.

“She, ah, well, sort of turned up at the apartment.”

Jonne blinked and looked slightly startled.

“Oh?”

“She was talking to Kris, and, shit, I couldn't hear her, but he could.”

Jonne stopped and turned a intent look on him that made Japa uncomfortable.

“Not everyone can hear Lilith.  She says it’s part of her curse that only the pure of spirit and the stalwart of heart can hear her.”

“Pure of spirit hunh?” Japa tried to joke, as Jonne was rather well known for his sexual exploits.

Jonne rolled his eyes and went back to pacing and jiggling the fussy baby in his arms.

“Sex has nothing to do with it and you know it.”

Japa winced; he was the one who had been deaf to her voice after all.

“Most folks can't hear her, so I have no idea what the definition of 'pure of spirit' is that she has to work under.  All of Sammy Black's team can hear her.  So can Linke, Yu and Kiro.”

“Really?”  Japa boggled that the German equivalent of the pervy pixie in front of him was counted as pure anything, well, other than pure sin.  “Maybe it's because I pointed a gun at her.”

“ ** _Japa_**!”  Jonne sounded exasperated.

“What?  She's a _demon_ , and she was in my _kitchen_ with my _best friend._   What was I supposed to think?”

“Nephilium are Angels kin, not demons, idiot.  Yes, some are really nasty and not big on humanity as a general class, but not all demons consider us to be wine gummies just waiting to be eaten.”

Japa winced.

“Never met one of those,” he muttered as Jonne continued.

“Lilith always does all she can to protect her chosen.”  His face went sad briefly.  “It's only when we cast aside our promise that she can't do anything.”

Japa blinked as the implications of that sank in.

Then Jonne speared him with a look.

“I think I'd have a chat with any girlfriends I was thinking of having children with Japa, you tend to hang around with Hunter types.  They might not have a sense of humor about things.”

Japa boggled.

“You can't be serious.”

Jonne smiled serenely.

“I'm not the one with a fresh Mark of St. Gabriel on my forehead.”

~0~

Japa sighed and watched as Kris slept.

Why couldn't he have just been born gay?  Hell, even just bi would have helped.  But here he was, stuck with a best friend he loved more than sense but wasn't sexually attracted to in the slightest.  Worse Kris's former singer clearly still loved him dearly.  Add to that his former co-guitarist still clearly loved him and the guy who had stepped into his position considered him a good, if slightly flaky friend.

Like his life wasn't complicated enough.

Then he'd met Sammy Black, not as a fellow musician, but as a fellow Hunter and had his head implode even more.

Sammy Black was a vampire.

More than just being a High Line, hell everyone who paid any attention at all knew Vivian was a High Line vampire, Sammy was one of the rare ones who could cope with sunlight right from the get go.  So he might be counted as a Royal by the time he was fifty and that boggled his mind.

Then he'd met Sammy's bonded mate and about swallowed his tongue in shock.

He'd met Mikko, in passing because of Illy and his need for physical components to set his wards and do some of the other goofy stuff he did.  He'd never realized that the owner of Illy's favorite hole in the wall herb and esoterica shop was anything other than human.

He'd also never realized that Julian was a Wardmaster, when his older brother wasn't more than a baseline sensitive, or that lycan could bond to more than one mate.

He'd fervently wished for brain bleach when he realized Julian was bonded to the pervert Christian and the stick in the mud Jason.  It just made his head hurt.

But back to Mikko.

Mikko was just like Lilith.

Well, almost like her anyway, he was second generation to her first, whatever difference **that** really made.

His wings looked more like how he expected demon wings to look, and black and bat-like not covered in dense layers of soft feathers.  But when he'd felt those wings go around him to reflect a curse back on the sender he'd felt warmth and soft short fur.

Of course then he'd been pushed to the ground as Mikko and Sammy had dealt with the problem.  Afterwards he'd learned that a lot of Jason's stodginess was that he was a _healer_ , and one who was not only damn good at his job, but one who took it _very_ seriously.

His Sammy had been glad to get him back mostly intact.  The bruises would heal a lot faster than curse damage or a bullet hole.

Mikko had been able to explain some things about Lilith to him, and that had helped him coping with Kris pining for Jonne.

Well at least until the shit had hit the fan again.

~0~

“You're telling me this is all because of some whacked out fan girl and a cult of demon summoning hacks?”  Sammy yelled as he flailed his arms in his frustration.  “We've gotten locked up while another Hunter group takes care of the fucking problem because _we_ aren't capable?  We deal with demon cult fuckwits all the fucking time!”

Japa winced.  Sammy in a snit was something none of them enjoyed dealing with.  Worse from his perspective was that half the Negative team was stuck down here with them.  Compounding that _Kris_ had been stuffed down here as well and he was doing the wistful sighs and longing looks at Jonne.  The tentative renewal of their friendship hadn't stopped the two longing for each other; just Jonne had had other priorities when the mother of his son had died unexpectedly.

Larry and Hata were going to _kill_ him.

He really wished he'd managed to escape the lock down like Antti and Jay had.  He'd need less hair dye to cover the gray hairs he was getting already.

~0~

If Hata hid another grin Lauri was going to think very seriously about stringing the other guitarist up by his boot laces.  He'd just tie the idiots’ ankles together if he was feeling merciful.

If Jonne did another sad eyed look at Kris when he wasn't looking he was going to do something drastic.

Kris let out a soft sigh and shot another wistful look at Jonne and Larry broke.

“Oh, for the love of little demons...”

Sammy broke off his rant to look at Larry like he'd lost his mind as he grabbed Jonne in one hand and Kris in the other, dragged them out of their seats and shoved the pair of them into a closet.

Both had yelped and struggled, and Larry knew they'd each have a bruise on their biceps that would perfectly match his hands, but this was beyond ridiculous.

He snarled at them and slammed the door shut.

“Quit moping about things and **_do_** something about it for crying out loud!”  Larry growled at Hata when his reaction to things was to crack up.

“Shut up you, I didn't see you helping.”

The person he'd expected to yell the loudest just sighed and sat down from where he'd stood when Larry had moved.

“Well, maybe now they'll deal with things,” offered Japa softly.

Larry just sighed as he jimmied the door where it would take some work to get back open, which told him the moping had been pretty bad on the Kris side of the equation; god knew he'd been tempted to find a way to shackle Kris to Jonne's bed just to get the singer to stop pining.

The irony of shoving them into a closet to come out of wouldn't be funny until they both quit being idiots.

~0~

Jonne gaped at the closed door standing mere centimeters from his nose.

“Uh,” Kris coughed and started again.  “Um, what brought _that_ on?”

“I have no idea,” was all Jonne had to offer as he turned in the dim light of the tiny closet.  The space was shaped oddly, they barely had the space to both stand upright, but could both sit, or even lie down fairly comfortably.  Kris looked at him with a strange expression Jonne wasn't sure how to read, so he licked his lips and tried again.

“How, how have you been?”  He winced a little at how lame that sounded, but the sudden smile on Kris's face made his heart flutter all over again.  He'd been texting this man at least weekly for the last year, how could he be feeling all fluttery inside like this?

“Better since I actually was working with my councilors this time rather than thinking they were idiots.”  His face went sad for a moment then mostly cleared.  “I still miss Papa, but they gave me some better coping rituals to help.”

Jonne swallowed hard, anything had to be better than drinking oneself stupid and taking any drug that came to hand.  Japa had said something about lighting candles, and Jonne supposed that was okay, at least as long as Kris didn't set himself or the apartment on fire.

“I missed you.”  Jonne flushed as the words came out, he really hadn't meant to say that.  Kris had enough to deal with right now.  A few shows where they did a song or two together and hung out a little afterwards was nothing compared to being locked in a closet together.

Kris smiled back and settled himself on the floor and patted a spot on the carpet beside him in invitation.

“I missed you too.  But me being out of Tampere has been a good thing.  It keeps me away from not friends who would want me to fall back into old habits.  I just wish I could have been there to help with Seppo.”

Jonne winced and swallowed hard.  He was familiar with friends who really weren't, he learned about them and who his real friends were _very_ quickly after his son had been born and baby Seppo's mother had died.  The not friends couldn't understand that he couldn't always just hop up and go out all night with them anymore, things had to be planned out in advance.  Last minute shows required last minute scrambling for a sitter if there wasn't a nanny on duty that night.  The fans might think seeing the baby back by the sound table was adorable, but Jonne constantly worried that his baby boy would be deaf from the music by the time he was ten.

Larry had been a huge help in that period of hellish transition.  As had Jay, Janne, Antti and his brothers.  Hata had stepped up in ways that still surprised him, but Jonne had never changed a diaper before and been hopeless until Hata showed him a few of the tricks that helped him get a wriggly baby clean and wrapped back up without getting peed on every single time.

Jonne had seen Kris's name on the card that gleefully informed him that he was now subscribed to a lifesaving thing known as a diaper service, but that was a token that friends that didn't live in Tampere could offer.  Kris sounded like he wished he could help with dirty diapers, two am feedings and dealing with a child who was still sometimes screaming for no apparent reason.

“Is he sleeping through the night yet?”

Jonne blinked back tears, Kris was really interested.

“He's been better now that I've painted the walls with that potion Mikko made from Lilith's wing feather.”

“She said he was sensitive.” 

Jonne didn't have time to ponder that strange statement before Kris was turning a shockingly sweet smile on him.

“But given who his papa is that's not too surprising.”

Jonne felt his knees give and he landed with a little thump beside Kris on the floor.

“She said, you, you can _hear_ Lilith?”

Kris nodded and began to toy with a chain around his neck.

“She came to visit, scared the crap out of Japa.  Did you know Sammy made him get a pistol?”

Jonne shook his head mutely.

“Well Sammy did, and Japa came home to find her drinking tea at our kitchen table and freaked out.  He didn't even take the thing off safety, just pointed it at her and shook.”

Jonne couldn't stop the strangled giggle, he could picture that.  Finding Lilith in one's home did tend to be a bit unnerving.

“At least she wasn't cuddling your baby son with no nanny in sight,” he offered weakly.  Tommi hadn't been able to figure out what had happened with that nanny he'd hired to help Jonne with the baby.  She'd just vanished and not come back.  He'd had pure hell finding any that weren't foreign students and that could cope with Jonne's bizarre hours. Well, and weren't trying to crawl into Jonne's bed with him rather than mindering the baby.

Kris chuckled.

“I bet you had a heart failure.  She can be a touch intimidating.  I didn't get why angel's always went 'fear not' when they appeared until she popped up.  I almost fainted until she cuddled me and told me I didn't need to be afraid.”

Jonne nodded and found himself leaning comfortably into Kris's side, just like old times.

“Seppo was pulling feathers; I thought I was going to die.”

Kris laughed; a truly delighted laugh, that made Jonne smile just to hear it.

“Oh gods, he's a fearless little thing then.  Just like you.”

The look in Kris's eyes made Jonne's breath catch in his throat.

“I've been scared, lots of times.”

“But you never let it _stop_ you.  Even when you know that doing what's right is going to hurt you.”

Jonne felt his breath catch for another reason, hung on the chain Kris kept toying with was a clear amber drop, one that glowed ever so softly from within.

Seppo had a drop like that.  Jonne's hand reached up and pressed a drop just like it into his chest.

“Kris,”

Kris made and inquisitive noise as Jonne's free hand reached for the drop.

“You know what this is?”

Kris blinked and nodded.

“I promised,” he said softly.

Jonne let out a small sob and threw himself into Kris's arms.

Kris yelped when his head clipped the sloping ceiling of the closet, but willingly kissed him back as he sprawled out on the floor.

Neither paid any attention when the feeble light from the fixture over their heads blinked out, nor did they pay heed when there was a loud complaint about the darkness from outside their tiny haven.  The light from their pendants was enough to see by, more than enough for them to cling to each other and hide from the darkness with.

~0~

Larry grumbled at the thin line of clear golden light streaming out from under the closet door.  The power had failed and they were left with jus the light from their phones and lighters until Japa was able to get a lamp filled a lit.

But at least they'd dragged each other out of denial finally.

~0~

Vivian swore under his breath.

One of the kids this lot of lunatics had snatched had a tear of St. Gabriel around his neck.

He really wished he didn't recognize the damn thing by color, but he'd seen two just like it _very_ recently.  And he quietly offered up a prayer of gratitude that the Brides team was nowhere nearby right now. The little drop alone was bad enough, but Mikko hadn't been alone in raining death from above this time.  He'd had a partner with gray and black feathers.

This little one was Seppo Liimatainen.  No other random baby would have the interest of Lilith to the extent that she would be dropping stupid people with _lightning_.  Thank all the gods she sort of knew them and wasn't shocking the fuck out of them as they worked to clear the ritual spaces and find any of the other intended sacrifices.

Jonne was **so** going to kill them.

But that was later, for now he scooped the little guy up and was somewhat relieved when all he did was grab a fistful of hair and yank with a little gurgle of delight.

That was it, not matter how much Theon begged the curls _had_ to go.

Julian came in after him, saw the other babies and barely bit back what had to be choice swear words.  A breath later and Christian and Jason were both inside and each scooped up one of the little ones.  Vivian was reaching for the last one when Sammy darted in with a firm injunction to get the hell out.

Vivian would have protested, but Sammy scooped up the last child and took the one Julian cradled in his arms and was out the door again.

Jason winced but handed over the child he held to Christian and grabbed Julian as they all bolted for safety.  It wasn't like the two lycan could shift with the children in their arms anyway, and Christian was the faster runner even if Jason was the stronger of the pair.

Something up there was powerfully unhappy, and Vivian didn't really think it was Mikko raining lighting strikes down on the building.  His preferred mode of death from above was large caliber bullets and the occasional rock or heavy duty blessing.

But then he was too busy running like hell to think about it, the building was coming down around their ears.

~0~

The Private Line guys were grumpy by the time Theon got back and unlocked the bunker to let them back out.  The Negative guys also seemed glad to be back out in open air.  But what shocked Vivian was that, as soon as everyone was safely in the grand pile that was Christian's warehouse, it was Kris of all people who realized who Vivian was cuddling.

Not that he'd had much choice; the kid screamed blue murder if anyone but Vivian or Mikko held him.

“Seppo!”  Kris gasped and bolted for Vivian's side; Jonne let out a strangled sound and was right at Vivian's elbow and reaching for his son a bare moment later.

“How did you end up with him, he should have been with the new nanny.”

Jonne looked up and blanched at the grim faces he saw looking back.

“The cult?  She was part of it?”  Jonne looked devastated, but then relieved when Sammy shook his head no.

“From what Christian has figured out her brother was part of the cult, not her.”  Sammy winced as Mikko and Jason cleaned the nasty cuts he had on his arms.  From the twin bruises fading on Mikko's throat Sammy had already been bullied into feeding to help him recover from the beating he'd taken in the fight.

Japa's Sammy winced when he realized none of the Lovex team was what anyone would call unscathed.  Then groaned when Japa asked the pointed question he'd been avoiding thinking about.

“So why weren't we allowed along? We could have helped.”

“Japa, you can't even _shoot_ yet.”

“I'm getting better,” Japa growled back at Illy's complaint.

Christian snorted and watched as Kris and Jonne fussed over little Seppo, but then looked back at Japa's team.

“We wanted minimal people, bad enough us having Jules there.”  The big lycan winced at the thumping his slender mate served him with.  At least he knew Julian still loved him, even with him being an overprotective bastard.  And Julian had only smacked him with a loosely curled fist, not slugged him one for being an idiot.

Sammy sighed and winced as Jason firmly wrapped his arm, then spoke up to defend the actions that really had been his decision.

“We suspected that we'd have other help.”  His eyes lingered on Mikko for a long moment.  “And once we found the body of Seppo's nanny we knew there was going to be pure hell to pay when Lilith showed up.”

Illy gulped and Spit swore.

“When?” asked Japa weakly.  “Not **if** , _when_?”

“When.” said Sammy softly with a grimace. “One of her chosen was threatened, and worse than that, he's too young to have any chance of defending himself.”

Eliaz swore and abruptly sat down as he stared at Kris cuddling Jonne and little Seppo close.

“She'd have nuked us and asked questions of the ghosts.”

Sammy nodded.

“That's what we were afraid of.  And we knew if we told Jonne what we suspected we'd never have kept any of you out of it.”

Japa let out a low whistle, just based on rumor alone if Jonne had known his baby boy was one of the kids in danger they'd have had hell slowing him down.  He'd have been breaking down doors with his bare hands if needed to protect his son.  Jonne had all but stopped drinking after his son had been brought to him by child services.

Everyone knew he was getting scrutinized more closely than most other single fathers, because he'd been in the foster system as a kid himself.  Add in his line of work and there was a whole chunk of the system that was all for Jonne not being even given the chance to be a better parent than his had been.

But he was managing.  His brothers, his band and his real friends were standing by him and helping out.

Japa smiled at the silly faces Kris was making to make little Seppo giggle.

If he was right Jonne might not be exactly a single father for much longer.

For Jonne the fact that the flake that was Sir Christus might want to settle down and be a real daddy had to be one hell of a wakeup call.

~0~

Jonne couldn't bring himself to sleep without Seppo in the bed with him.  The idea that he'd been taken, taken and nearly killed by some group of demon summoning hacks terrified him.  Knowing that the people who had taken his baby boy were soundly dead beyond all hope of resurrection helped a little.  Knowing the ritual space that had been set up was nuked beyond any reconstruction helped too, but lightning was better than Salt, holly and the ashes of white ash for purification.

Lilith had come for his son.

If Sammy's team had fallen to a man his son still would have been safe.

He was glad it hadn't come to that.

Jonne sighed and stroked a light finger over Seppo's cheek as he slept.  The baby let out a tiny chirp and smacked his lips but didn't wake.  Kris sighed and reached for them, but stopped when his hand rested on Seppo's tummy, he sighed again and shifted to slightly curl around them both.

Jonne found himself blinking back tears.

He knew Kris had two daughters, but that neither of the mothers had been interested in letting him help in raising either of his little girls once he hadn't had the money from being in Negative coming in.  Thanks to Tommi's records Jonne knew a good chunk of Kris's royalty checks went straight to those women and that it had been set up that way by Kris before he'd been asked to leave the band.

Kris had never amended the request.

Tommi would kill him if he knew Jonne had gone snooping in his private files that way.

Seeing how Kris was acting now made Jonne wish that Kris had the chance to be a daddy to his girls more than once a year on their birthdays, _if_ their mothers could be talked into it.

Seppo had gotten fussy and Jonne hadn't gotten more than half awake before Kris was up and taking Seppo off to change and feed him.

Now he was curled on Seppo's other side and was curled protectively around him, it made Jonne swallow hard.

He'd loved his man before.  Why hadn't he seen this?  Why hadn't he known that given the chance he'd make such a good dad?

There was a loud bang on the other side of the door and Jonne gaped in shock when Kris reacted without even thinking, Seppo was pressed into his arms and a small handgun came out from under Kris's pillow.  Jonne was drawing breath to yell when he realized the snaps and clicking sounds were Kris loading and arming the weapon.

He hadn't been sleeping with a loaded gun under his pillow.

Not that it mattered; it was loaded and ready and pointed at the door.

The door opened and Sammy yelped and ducked, which had Japa lurching around the doorframe to look.

Japa saw a weapon pointed at him and let out a very girly squeal.

Kris just sighed, pointed the gun toward the ceiling and pointedly unloaded it, making sure to pick up the ejected bullet and load it back in the clip before tucking both back under his pillow.

Seppo slept through the whole thing.

“Um, Kris?” asked Sammy from his spot on the floor.

“Yeah?” answered Kris as he was checking that he and Seppo hadn't taken any harm from the abrupt wake up.

“Why do you have a gun under your pillow?”

Jonne barely stifled a giggle at the exasperated look on Kris's face.

“Sammy,”

“Yeah?” Sammy and Japa were both back on their feet.

“What do you do for a living?”  Jonne couldn't stop the little giggle then as Kris hastily amended himself.  “Other than stand in front of screaming girls and sing.”

Sammy gave Kris a wary look.

“Private Line are Hunters Kris, you know that.”

Japa got the point and slapped both hands over his mouth to stop the giggles.  Kris just sighed as Sammy was still missing the point.

“Sammy, why would you sleep with a gun under your pillow?”

The offended look on Sammy's face had Jonne biting his lip to keep from laughing outright and waking the baby.

“Because, things... oh.  Kris, you aren't part of a Hunter team.”

The mild look Kris shot Sammy had both Jonne and Japa giving Kris a long second look.

“Not at the moment, no.”  Kris sighed and looked faintly sad.

Japa was in the door and on the bed hugging his best friend.

“Kris, you don't have to do this.  You don't have to be like us.”

The wan smile and sad eyes made Jonne want to hug Kris and promise things he knew in his heart he couldn't promise.

“I was born for this Japa.  I learned some things from Lilith.  Things about how Papa died, _why_ he died.”

Jonne shivered and hugged Seppo a little tighter, which made the sleeping child squirm a little before going limp again in his papa's arms.

Sammy swore under his breath.

“Kris, you can't trust what demons say.”

“She's not a demon.”  Jonne snapped reflexively.

“The law says she is,” Sammy snapped back.

“The law is wrong!”

“Hate to break up a family quarrel,” came a soft voice.  “But I'd have to agree.  Nephilium aren't demons.  All you have to do is ask a demon.”

“Like you'd know,” Sammy snarked at Mikko.

Mikko just smiled.

“I think I would know what my species is a bit better than you would.” He held up a hand.  “And I'm not saying we're all good by any definition of the word.  But even demons aren't really all of a type.  Jonne, we got a message from a Ville Frosen that Child Services wants to have a chat with you about Seppo.”

Jonne let out a low moan.

Just what he didn't need right now.

“What's Child Services got to do with what some de...” Sammy edited himself when Japa and Kris both scowled at him.  “ _Not_ demon told Kris about his father?”

Mikko shrugged.

“I'd have to say nothing.  But I think anything Lilith had to say about one of her Chosen is probably pretty accurate.  She's a lot older than us, and none of us know more than a glimmering about how she works.”

Sammy turned a challenging stare on Kris, who just looked back.

After a long moment of uncomfortable silence Kris shot Jonne an apologetic look.

“Papa was a Slayer.”

~0~

“My head hurts.”  Sammy snorted at the man he shared a name with.  The poor singer had his head in his hands and was staring into the bottom of his half filled coffee mug like he hoped salvation was at the bottom of the cup.

“Laugh it up fang face,” grumbled the man as he shifted his glare up from the mug to glare at Sammy.

“The quote is 'laugh it up fuzzball.'  And Christian **is;** he's taken great glee in passing the word on.”

“Shove it bat breath,” snarked Sammy as he glared at Mikko.  “Slayers aren't an everyday thing around here.”

Sammy sighed and wrapped his arms around his mate.  “I'm acquainted with the breed thank you.  It's not like Kris has changed in the last ten hours.”

Frustrated hands shoved black hair out of green eyes.

“I'm well aware of that.  But the man I thought I knew didn't sleep with a loaded gun under his pillow.”

“It wasn't loaded,” said Sammy, taking some amusement in the other mans frustrations

Sammy flipped a hand at him.

“Semantics.”  Then he froze.  “Shit, does this mean Matthau is a Slayer too?”

Sammy shared a thought with his mate and bit back a smile.

“Possibly.”  The only way to be sure would be to track down the other band and corner Matthau to find out.  Probably not a safe thing to do if he was an active Slayer.

“Oh you are _so **much**_ help, Black.” snarled Sammy as he glared back down at his coffee.

“Well, at least there I know how we can find out.”

Sammy blinked down at the blond in his arms.

“You do?”  This was news to him.

Mikko smiled up at him.

“Of course.  I'll call Jyrki and ask.”

Sammy looked over at the other Sammy in the room and bit back a grin when he saw the other man thumping his head off the table in frustration.

~0~

Bazie blinked sleepily at Jyrki and tried to figure out why his singer was pacing the length of the buses lounge area while talking to himself.  Normally when he had a song chewing on him he'd perch somewhere with a note book and swear at it in several languages.  At least until Jussi decided to be a little snot and steal the notebook anyway.

He could see Archzie sleepily blinking from the other couch and could hear Timo's snoring coming from the bunk area.  Jussi was perched on the back of that couch watching Jyrki pace with an intent look on his face. 

Bazie sighed and stretched a little then smiled into the sleepy green eyes that looked up at him.  Luna had been curled up in his arms again.

“No.  Last time we saw him Matthau wasn't active, sensitive certainly, but not active.”  Jyrki turned on his heel and was pacing away again, so Bazie shot Jussi a puzzled look.

Jussi slipped down and bounced up to the back of the couch Baize was still laid out on.

“Mikko called; looks like Sir Christus is an active Slayer.”

Baize blinked, then looked down into Luna's green eyes and blinked again.

He couldn't have heard that right.

Christus, Sir 'I'll take any drug that's offered to me and not ask questions' Christus, was an _active_ Slayer?

Luna just shrugged at him.  But she'd never really met Christus before he'd been to rehab.

“So what's that got to do with Matthau?”

Jussi shrugged, as in tune as he was with how Jyrki thought he wasn't the older vampires mate.  Jyrki was still courting an oblivious Burton; much to the amusement of the man he called his little brother.

Jyrki sighed and hung up.

“Lilith was seen again.”

Bazie groaned.  That was abrupt.

“Jyrki, can we save the earth shattering revelations until after I've had coffee?”

Jyrki sighed, but then nodded.  So Bazie reluctantly let Luna up and staggered over to the table as she started working on brewing some liquid life for them.  For whatever reason she was the one the infernal machine that served as their coffee maker would work best for.  That and she could cope with ‘mornings’ far better than the rest of them.

Jyrki shook Archzie awake and walked back to wake Timo as well.

Archzie reacted with an unintelligible grumble as he rolled over, off the couch and onto the floor of the bus with a loud thud.  The swearing that followed wasn't any more civil than the grumble had been, but at least Bazie could translate it in his head without needing his lycan to gibberish to Soumi translator functioning.

There was a loud yelp, another loud thud and Bazie was snickering at the sound of Timo swearing at Jyrki for dragging him bodily out of his bunk.

A moment later and the other guitarist was staggering into the lounge partly propelled by Jyrki and partly held upright by him.

Luna was turning with mugs in her hands and offered the first one to Bazie, which made him smile, and the second to Jyrki.  The next pair went to Timo and Archzie as they still weren't even half awake.  The last two both got liberally dosed with cream and sugar; one was passed to Jussi who thanked her with a kiss on the cheek the other she kept for herself.

A gulp of liberally sweetened black death and Bazie felt more able to cope.

“So what's this about Christus being a Slayer?”

Archzie squinted at Bazie.

“What's that got to do with Lilith being sighted again?”

Jyrki sighed and took a few swallows of his coffee.

“Let me start at the beginning.  That was Mikko.” He held up a hand, stopping the initial round of questions.  “Lovex is doing well and Mikko is still working on the problem we asked about.  They had a small demon cult problem earlier this week and one of the children they rescued was Jonne Liimatainen's son.”

Bazie swore under his breath.  That rather neatly explained why Lilith had been seen.  She had no sense of humor at all where her chosen and demon cults were concerned.  Especially when the chosen in question wasn't even two yet.

“The cult is no longer an issue.”

“Smoking pit more like,” muttered Timo but he subsided at a look from Jyrki.

“They are no longer an issue, but in the process it's been learned that Christus is both an active Slayer, apparently as his father was before him and has Promised and been accepted.”

Bazie put up a hand, even as Luna stiffened and Archzie swore.

“What exactly do you mean Promised?”

“He means Christus is pure enough of spirit to hear Lilith and he's apparently Chosen.”

Bazie sighed.

“Regular words?  For the stupid and insufficiently caffeinated?”

“He's sworn to the powers to a path,” said Luna softly.

Bazie blinked.

“Wait.  **_What?_** ”

Jyrki sighed.

“He's one of us Bazie.  Only he's got Slayer blood to back him up.  And two of St. Gabriel's blessings, a mark and a tear.  Mikko was calling to make sure Matthau wasn't also an active Slayer.”

Bazie blinked again.

“But two in one generation is, oh.  Oh, _shit_.  Okay. I'm awake now.  He's not though, is he?”

Jyrki shook his head no.

“We don't have that kind of an oddity happening on our watch.”

“Oh good.”  Bazie took another slug of his coffee.  “I'm at five improbable things already this morning.  Any more and I'd need breakfast to cope.”

“As long as they are improbable, not impossible, we're good,” teased Jussi.  “But Christus being pure anything has to count for at least two.”

Bazie offered his opinion in a one fingered salute, not that he didn't privately agree.

Christus as pure _anything_ , well, other than trouble, was a bit of a stretch.

Archzie apparently agreed with him.

“If I go back to sleep and wake up again will this all just have been a goofy ass dream.”

Jyrki sighed and just walked away.

~0~

“He's good.” observed Christian mildly as he watched Kris working with Romeo and Yu. 

“Slayer reflexes.” offered Kiro as he chewed his lip and watched his lover neatly duck under a swing and hop forward to press his practice blade into Kris's side as Romeo came up to rest his on Kris's throat.  There was a pause and all three men moved back to start again.

“He's still got good instincts.  And after hearing about how he reacted to be awakened suddenly I don't think I want him peeved at me with silver rounds in his gun.”

Kris managed a shaky smile.

“Are you saying you don't trust Mikko's anti silver potions?”

Christian let out a very rude snort.

“Potioned or not, silver bullets hurt like a bitch.  I don't enjoy getting shot anyway.”

“True, I don't think anyone does.” Kiro went back to watching.  “I didn't realize lycan had a Slayer equivalent.”

“We don't, not exactly.”

Kiro turned his teal eyes on Christian.

“So how do you explain how Kris reacted to Romeo?”

“Uh, erm, well, I can't?”

The look he got told Christian that his floundering hadn't really convinced Kiro.

“It's kind of complicated.  Jason could explain it better than I can.  It's all mystic-y mumbo jumbo.”

“Way to throw your mate under the bus there Christian,” teased a voice from behind them.

Christian sighed and half glared at Mikko.

“You explain it then.  You're good at the mystic-y stuff; I'm just an ordinary lycan.  Shut up.”  Christian growled at the look Mikko shot him regarding him being ordinary anything.

“Slayers are born, not made.”

Kiro sighed.

“I know that. Yu said that within a heartbeat of hearing about what Kris is.”

Mikko set down the long skinny bundle in his arms.

“You know about Healers and Mystics.”

Kiro nodded as Christian settled in to hear an outsiders view on lycan distinctions.

“Jason's a Healer, and Juri and Jinxx and Mystics.  Juri says that's why they have that funny musky smell.”

Mikko nodded.

“Before you ask no, I don't know exactly why they have the musk.  I have suspicions that it acts as a protection from certain types of unfriendly and outright evil spirits, but I don't have any proof.  And I'm not about to risk Jinxx of Juri to test my theories.  Shaman are another class, and before you say but that's what a Mystic is, a Shaman is made by inclination and training, a Mystic is _born_ that way.  A Mystic tends to also be a shaman, but the two aren’t mutually inclusive.”  Mikko paused and watched as the three in the dirt ring below them worked.

“Another class is the Warden, sometimes called Warder or even Guardian.  They tend to act as perimeter guards for threats coming in from the outside; they are the lycan you are most likely to find off on their own away from Pack enclaves and territories.”

Christian twitched a little, Mikko knew his stuff.  Comforting on the one hand, unnerving as hell on a more personal end.  But Mikko was continuing.

“Wardens are born, and tend to follow bitch to cubs rather than sire to child like Slayer lines do.  Wardens also tend to have more hybrids in their numbers, like the bitches find a suitable sire and be damned the species.”

Kiro's eyes sharpened as he looked down at were his mate and friend were helping teach Kris.

“I thought hybrids were really rare.”

“They are.  Except in Warden lines.  Then they are everywhere.” Mikko stepped forward a bit to look down at the practice ring.  “Take Romeo, he's a rarity in that he's both Warden and Slayer.”

Christian froze as Kiro made a puzzled 'hunh' sound.

“His mother is from a long standing Warden line.  But the man she bred to, to get Romeo was a Slayer.”

“So the man he calls his father isn't?”

Mikko chucked.

“Oh no, that man he calls his father _is_ his father, he's just not his sire.  Not his sperm donor.”

“Okay, that made my head hurt.”

Mikko smiled.

“Kris has two children, but their mothers won't let him be their father.  If he was allowed to he would be, as it stands in lycan terms he's their sire, not their father.  It's not uncommon even now when two dog lycan are mates for a bitch to offer to breed for them, occasionally a dog will offer for two bitches who are mated when he's got no mate of his own.  Bitch and sire are noted in the records, but father and mother or fathers and mothers are a matter of who raises the cub.”

“How do you know all this?  It's not anything we generally talk about.” asked Christian carefully.  Generally it wasn't spoken of at all to outsiders, it was none of their damn business how the pack raised their young.

Mikko gave Christian an odd smile.

“I learned it from a lycan I served with, a long time ago.”

“Okay?”  Christian prodded.  The elders needed to know someone had discussed things lycan preferred to keep to themselves.

Mikko smiled and it left Christian with a funny feeling in his belly.

“It was in World War two, he wasn't known as a lycan, just a man trying to free his country from Axis oppression.  Jason's studied under him, Ewe Mistrunner.”

Christian gaped in shock.

The man who had shared lycan history with an outsider was Elder Ewe.

~0~

Kris panted and barely made it out of the ring before he flopped on his back in the grass to try and cool off.

Yu dropped down to sit beside him as Romeo trotted off, damn lycan stamina, to get water for all three of them.

“You're doing really well.”

“Whoo, I flail like an idiot well, peachy, my life is complete.”  Kris snarked as he wheezed trying to get his breath back.

Yu laughed at him.

“No seriously, you might not have been able to take us both out, but you were slowing us both down.  And you've only been working with a practice blade for three days.  Rom and I both had a decade or so of practice on you.”

Kris closed his eyes with a low whine.

“That makes me feel so much better.  You're both younger than me!”

“Not by much,” offered Romeo as he dropped down to sit by them and offered middling sized leather bottles to each of them.  “Only a few years younger really.  And look at it this way; you've gotten the attention of several of the Warden bitches.”

Kris sat up and accepted the bottle, at least after three days of working he now knew how to open the damned things and took a few long swallows of water. Wiping his mouth he asked the pointed question.

“And why exactly is this a good thing?  Last time I looked a lycan bitch could eat me for breakfast.  It's not like they'd be interested in a quick lay.”

The smiled Yu and Romeo shared made Kris groan.

“No, just no.  I so don't need to go there.”

Light footsteps distracted him.

“If you don't want to go there how about we see about getting you armed with something a bit more substantial that a weighted practice blade?”

“Mikko!”  Romeo bounced to his feet and exchanged one armed hugs and what looked like affectionate nips to each other’s jaws.  Then he helped Mikko set the long thin bundle on the grass.  “What are these?”

“I went through my collection; Kris needs a proper Slayers blade.”

He untied the bundle and began carefully unrolling the leather, revealing five blades.

“I didn't know you collected demon slaying blades.” said Romeo quietly as Yu let out a low whistle.

“Better me than some other folks.  I'll at least try and get them back into the hands they belong in.”

Yu grimaced and shared a grim look with Romeo.  Their practice blades looked in passing like Yu's cross-hilted long sword and Romeo's katana.

“I grabbed the swords that called to me, but a couple of these are parts of sets.”

“How many demon slaying blades do you have?”  Yu asked in a tone that Kris felt was rather wary.

“I've been entrusted with ten, the other two dozen I've picked up here and there.  Sammy's broadsword he found on the wall of the crypt where he was made, we did a search in daylight and there were two other blades on the walls there.  He carries one of them, the other is here.” There was a grimace.  “Some demon cults are pretty stupid about their trophies.”

Kris gulped as his hand hesitated over a very pretty long sword.

“What do you mean entrusted?” he asked weakly.

Mikko sighed.

“Meaning someone who didn't know they had children gave me their blade before they died, or willed it to me on their death.  Some weren't as childless as they thought, the blades know their bloodline.”

Kris hesitated.

“You make them sound alive, like a person.”

He missed the look Romeo and Yu exchanged.

“The old ones almost are.  I have one, a bronze dagger, that creeps me out to handle, but I'm afraid to let it out into the world without knowing who I'm giving it to.”

“It scares you?” asked Romeo softly.

“Yes,” Mikko answered without hesitating.  “It's over four thousand years old.”

“Predates you by a bit?” teased Romeo.

“Predates my father by a bit.  He was only four thousand years old when he died.”

Yu and Romeo both perked up.

“Really?  I thought all first generations were, like Methuselah, crazy old.” said Yu.

Mikko shook his head.

“First generations vary, the youngest is around fifteen hundred years old, the oldest, well, I don't know if even they know how old they are.”

Kris blinked, then before he could stop himself he asked.

“So how old are you?”

Mikko smiled faintly.

“A bit under two hundred.  I was born in 1816.”

That clearly meant something profound to Yu.

“That explains why you hate modern history textbooks.”

“Hazard of having lived through some of that history.” agreed Mikko.  “I'll bring you the matching dagger Kris; I'll grab it when I return the rest of these to the vault.”

Kris blinked.

“What?”  Then he looked down in shock at the blade in his hand.

He didn't remember picking the slender long sword up.

~0~

Sammy winced as his team watched Kris working on the animated practice dummies in the ring below.  He hadn't realized it was possible to lop something's head off with one hand, not from someone as slender as Kris was.  He had to admit though that skewering an opponent with a long dagger then lopping their head off with a sword was pretty effective as a permanent deterrent.

“He's better than I thought he'd be,” offered Illy softly.  “Given he's learning a style different than Yu or Romeo uses.”

“He's determined to protect his son.”

Eliaz blinked when his teammates turned to look at him like he'd just lost his mind, well other than Japa.  Japa knew what he meant.

“Kris doesn't have a son.  Unless you know about another of his bastards Eliaz?”  Sammy snarked.

“You don't think he considered Jonne's son as his own?” said Japa softly.

The other three turned to watch as the man and child in question came out into the ring.  Kris stopped and sheathed his weapons so he could take the baby who was reaching for him and rub noses with a happy smile before wrapping an arm around Jonne and walking off.

“Well fuck me running,” breathed Sammy softly.

“Rather not thanks; still prefer girls.” jibed Japa with a crooked smile.  He ducked then squealed and ran as his band mates came after him with mayhem in mind.


	20. Meetings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes a random act has consequences. In this case good, but it's complicated things tremendously.

 

Andy blinked, rubbed at his eyes and blinked again.

The view really didn't change.  So he looked over at Jake and got a bemused shrug in answer.

“I recognize Jason and Christian, who's the bitch?” asked Jinxx as he took in a few deep open mouthed gulps of air.

He looked silly scenting as a human.  But Andy decided ribbing Jinxx on that little fact should probably wait until his bruises had healed.

“Who are the other guys, I've never _seen_ a lycan that round before.” said Jake as his eyes tracked what looked like a round ball of fuzz with legs and head and a tail.

“That would be Midge and Gas.  The bitch is Luna,” offered Mikko mildly.  “Burton is around somewhere.”

“Burton is making eyes at Julian again and making Vivian laugh himself silly.  And Ville is no help as he's trying to convince Jussi to feed.”

Andy twitched; he hadn't heard anyone crunching up in the ankle deep snow.  He took a quick glance, and then turned to stare at the golden blond dreadlocks that hung down past the tall man's ass.

“Um, hi.”  Jinxx tentatively offered a hand in his habitual human style greeting.  “I'm Jinxx.”

He got a slow, warm smile and the proffered limb was accepted and given a shake.

“Linde, thank you for the help earlier.”

Andy fidgeted, then sighed.

“It's not like we could just keep walking.”

Linde turned that slow smile on him, and Andy felt the tingle that he'd learned indicated a High line vampire, an old one with lots of unconscious charisma.

“Still, we'd have had pure hell dealing with Ville getting seriously hurt, and Jyrki would have been an unholy terror if his little brother was hurt.”

“Little brother?” started Jake, “Rumors have them, you know, _doing_ it.”

The eruption of laughter made Jake twitch and left Andy feeling rather odd.  But Linde got his giggle fit back under control and wiped at his eyes.

“Are you Andy?”

Jake shook his head and pointed at Andy.

“I'm Jake, he's Andy.  Ash is off sitting with CC,” Jake grimaced.  “They threw me out.”

Linde's face went sober.  “I'm not surprised.  While Manna was helping us every time she was injured even a little I turned into an overbearing monster.  Jason was the only healer who could keep me under control.  Midge and Gas would just drag me out of the Hall screaming my head off like an idiot.”

Andy bit his lip at the conflicted look on Jake's face.

“It's, it's just he's...”

Linde thankfully interrupted before Jake got any further.

“He's your life mate, and very precious to you.  We're the same way.  But Midge and Gas, their mates live in the enclave here, so they and the little ones are protected.  For all the rumors of Jyrki and Jussi's mating, well, those two adore each other, but it's not really sexual.”

Andy let out a snort.  It sure as hell had _looked_ sexual when they'd looked up to find that the ice sprites that had been swarming were either dead or fled and the tall vampire had swept in to do a thorough scent check of the small one.

Linde smiled, and this was somehow a softer smile.

“Jyrki is very old; he's got a different set of habits as far as taking care of his own people goes.”

“You have no room to talk,” came a droll comment from a deep voice and Andy twitched again.  What was it about this part of the country that bred rich toned deep voices in the men?

Then he felt a jolt of panic from Ash and was off for the Healers Hall as fast as he could go.  He heard Jake's startled question, then a fervent 'oh _shit_ ' and knew the guitarist was hot on his heels.

Something must be happening to CC.

~0~

Jason saw Andy take off like someone had lit his jeans on fire and saw Jake hesitate then bolt after him, leaving a puzzled Linde and a slightly miffed Jyrki in their wake.  He sighed in resignation and headed back to the Hall, his lope would get him there well ahead of the two humans.

To his surprise Luna broke off and was at his shoulder a few strides later.

Clearing the doors to the Hall Jason knew what had happened and swore savagely in his head as he changed back to human and tackled Merle.

Ash had been trying to keep the trainee in hand, but Merle outweighed the small vampire at least twice over.

“Stand down,” snarled Jason as he partly pinned the younger lycan.

“But he's a...”

“That is not relevant!” Jason's snarl went vicious as he continued.  “He's _Pack_ ; he's shed blood and _proved_ he's willing to die to defend his brothers, their mates and cubs.”

“But...”

The ruckus was attracting a crowd and Jason was getting beyond irritated, he shifted into his hybrid form and bared his teeth right in the trainee's face just as Elder Ewe, the most senior healer in the enclave came into view.

“Enough!”

Jason froze, but didn't let Merle up.  He could hear CC's frightened voice and Jake's broken croon.  He could hear his own darling Wardsmith whispering and felt the charging of wards behind him.  No matter what CC would be protected.  At least for now.

“Healer Jason, what is the meaning of this disturbance?”

Jason didn't look away from Merle. He was the most senior healer in this mess; of course Elder Ewe was asking him.  Merle was still struggling and panting in frustration.

“Healer Trainee Merle discovered something he disliked in one of the patients.”  Jason had a suspicion Elder Ewe already knew what CC was, but just in case he'd act to protect him as much as he could.

“Healer Trainee Merle, what did you learn that troubled you so much you had to bring it to the patient rather than to your elders?” 

Jason suppressed a wince, but only barely.  Elder Ewe had a knack for making you feel like a blithering idiot without ever raising his voice.  Jason had only ever had this tone used on him _once_ early in his training, he'd taken great pains to _never_ hear it again.

Merle shrank into himself for a moment and stopped squirming.  But then he opened his mouth.

“But he's a...”

“And you think I'm not aware of the young man's powers?”  The tone was mild and Jason winced a little.  So much for keeping things secret.  He hoped to god that Jake kept his head.  But the Elder wasn't finished.

“Great power takes tremendous control to wield responsibly, unreasonable fear based on the actions of a few make it all but impossible for those carrying great power to _learn_ responsible control, how then is he to blame for the irrational fears of the human race?  Should all lycan be tarred with the same brush as Ulsted the butcher?”

“No,” Merle's voice was very small.

“Should all vampires be punished for Mengele's madness?”

“No,” repeated Merle.

“Has that young man done anything that puts the pack or it's cubs at risk?”

“No, but he's _dangerous_!”

Jason snorted rather rudely, any of them was dangerous.  But the Elder echoed his thought with his next pointed question.

“And you aren't?”

Merle went stiff under Jason's taloned hands.

“I would never!”  The indignation made Jason snort again.  Silly cub.

“And you believe that simply because of an accident of birth that youngster would behave differently than you?”

Jason relaxed and sat back on his haunches to watch and wait.  He was between the trainee and CC, so if the cub decided to be stupid he could stop him.  Poor Jake had to be beside himself in worry though.

“But he's a Destroyer,” wailed Merle.

“Destroyers are at their most dangerous when they are alone.  What do you see?”

Merle looked at the floor.

“Merle, look, at, him.”

The cub looked miserable, but he obeyed the crack of the elder's command.  Jason looked as well.

He saw CC, thin and pale in one of the beds, clearly frightened half to death as he was heavily swathed in bandages dosed with the paste that helped the ice burns Joutuni-nix left behind and heavily medicated.  Jason suspected he was afraid he'd be forced to defend himself and blow things to kingdom come because his control was shot.  Jake was planted in front of him, bristling like a proper mate would be at the threat.  Around him Jinxx in his wolf form, poised and ready to defend his brother as needed.  Ash with his eyes glowing faintly in irritation and Andy humming under his breath in a way that made the power pool he carried with him shift and boil like the water under a waterfall.

“What do you see?”

“He's got people.”  Merle didn't say he had a pack to defend him, but that was how Jason saw the Brides team, small yes, but still a proper hunting pack.

“He has a mate who loves him more than life.”

Jason snickered, he'd been there the first time Jake had gotten thrown out for being in the way, and knew he'd been tossed out on his butt at least twice since then.

“He has brothers who love him.  Merle, cub, he's as safe as any of us can be who carry great powers.”

“But,” Merle’s protest sounded weak.

“Child, none of us know what we will do if we are pressed, but he's done everything he can to defend the Pack.  We cannot cast him out for might be's.  One must **do** before one can be punished for a crime.  That young man _landed_ in that bed by doing, by stepping in to help defend another.  By doing what he felt was the good and proper thing to do.”

Elder Ewe swept the poor young idiot up and carried him off; Jason just sighed and shifted back to human.  To his surprise he found Luna and Jussi both in the shadows on either side of CC's door.

But CC _had_ gotten hurt jumping in to help keep Jussi and Ville from getting turned into ice pops.  Little Luna might be fairly quiet, but once she gave you her loyalty only death could shake it.  And Jussi was part of her family, and she adored him the way a little sister adored a doting elder brother.

“Would someone care to explain that?”

Jason sighed.

Jyrki was as bad as Luna for fierce devotion, and _he_ had a couple centuries of practice on her.

Jason sighed again then smiled wanly at Julian when he said he'd get drinks for everyone and darted off.  Julian's wards would recognize his own team and allow friends in while keeping anyone with hostile intent out.  He nudged Jyrki toward the door and only winced a little when Luna said she would get the rest of her pack and Ville's.

This had been looking like such a good day.

~0~

Archzie shrugged at the revelation, as did Midge and Gas, but they'd smelled things and Gas had experience with how a Destroyers powers made them smell a bit like an area did after being struck by lightning.

When Ville had asked why he hadn't mentioned it to the rest of them the big man had shrugged.

“He was in the power link with a Prophet, figured he was safe.”

Burton let out a muted complaint about sharing information that Ville shushed him for.  Amusingly from Jason's perspective was that CC appeared to relax marginally at Gas's 'safe' comment.  None of them really was what anyone would call 'safe', they couldn't be with the skills they had.  Then again no one in a human police, military or EMS service that had any skills or training could be called 'safe' either.  It was all a matter of perspective.

Jyrki sat and appeared to be deep on thought as Jason scanned the other vampires.

Linde didn't seem to care as in his mind CC had proved himself in battle already.  He could be a touch old fashioned like that at times.  Jussi was biased and said so, but it had been _his_ butt CC had gotten hurt trying to save.  Baize and Timo both appeared to be reserving judgment until Jyrki came down one way or the other.

Luna though brought a mug of broth for CC, and made sure it went to Jake first.

That little action made Jyrki cock his head and address the man directly, for now ignoring the frightened brown eyes of the man huddled half behind, half beside him.

“You're a Mourner.”

Jake nodded as he took an exploratory sip of the steaming broth and rolled it in his mouth before swallowing and gently pressing the mug into CC's trembling and heavily bandaged hands.

Jyrki settled and appeared to be thinking again, but then he mused aloud.

“A Mourner, a Prophet, a Mystic and a Destroyer all tied up with a little vampire Deviant.  You make for an interesting puzzle.”

Jason sighed when Andy growled.  At least Jyrki hadn't said problem, just puzzle.

“He saved my ass, Jyrki.  He didn't have to.” Jussi snarked rather pointedly.  “Hell, a dozen folks saw and kept on walking, and that includes Kari because he doesn't like Ville.”

Jyrki nodded mildly, but Jason knew that was because Kari had just nailed his own coffin shut.  The other hunter had been making trouble in the community with very negative press and his complete inability to be any kind of a team player.  Refusing to help another Hunter when he was getting swarmed under by Joutuni of any flavor, or even just being swarmed under _period_ , was very bad juju; now made that much worse because an 'outsider' Hunter team had stepped in, without being asked to, where he hadn't.

“True, very true, and he had the good sense to call for backup before diving in.”  The look Jyrki shot over at Baize and the wince that answered it made Jason wonder what in blazes the other vampire had jumped into without calling for backup.

Then Jason flinched when those blue eyes bored into his.

“You called him Pack, why that particular term Jason?  You tend to use it sparingly.”

Jason winced.  But Jyrki and the Eyes team had known the Lovex team for years and been in numerous fights on the same side with them before Jason had grudgingly extended the term Pack to cover them.  Even then it was more because Christian already had and Julian felt they were family.  He really couldn't stand on the opposite side as his mates for very long.  Looking back he was surprised he'd managed to resist Julian's blue eyes for as long as he had.

“CC was willing to die to protect us within days of meeting us.  To keep Andy out of the hands of a nut job that would have used him right off to blast us and any other team he found off the face of the planet.”

Jyrki's eyes sharpened.

“Explain.”

“When we met, we were hunting a kiss of common vampires with the Bizarre team, but one of them had been a high power Summoner before he was infected.”  That alone would give Jyrki enough information that he could track down that particular case and read all the details for himself, and Jason knew he would go look things up.  He was worse than Mikko for wanting to know and understand things.  Christian had giggled himself silly over the fact the 300+ year old vampire had a killer data plan and had links to all the Hunter databases on his iPad.  Like Jussi was any better, he just used his laptop instead.

“A Summoner with an attitude problem,” grumbled Andy, but he subsided at a look from Ash and settled in to let the shorter vampire cuddle him.

Jason smiled wryly; attitude problem had been a bit of an understatement.

“He was investing ghouls with lesser demons kin.”

Jyrki abruptly stood and was swearing as he paced, clearly he'd seen _that_ trick before, and it had some _nasty_ memories attached

Jason continued, he knew this was just Jyrki reacting to something that seriously disturbed him, not anything personal.  At his age he'd seen things that just _reading_ about after the fact gave Jason nightmares.

“CC had volunteered to act as vampire bait so we could get them together to take care of them and got captured by the Summoner.”

That got a low whistle from Midge and a look of quiet respect out of Linde, even with CC not tasting good to vampires that move took some serious guts.  Even if you didn't get _eaten_ you could still be infected or killed.  Thank goodness for the inoculation potions Kiro and Mikko made, if only they lasted longer than a few months and could be given to the general population en mass.  It would save so much trouble.

“He tried to use CC as a hostage to get Andy, didn't he?” asked Luna softly as Burton swore under his breath.

Jason nodded.

“He'd summoned a mid level demon that had started blasting us and that had let the vampires get their hands on Ash as well, and they were going to blast both of them to bits unless Andy handed himself over.”

The looks of horror were answer enough, to have friend and bondmate both held would have had any of them doing whatever the hostage taker wanted, at least in the short term.  Longer term, well give how dangerous his bondmates were it was highly likely the hostage taker would end up very, _very_ dead.  The last idiot who had tried using Julian against he and Christian, well the cleanup crew had needed a mop and bucket.  And that was before Jason and Christian had cleared the doorway to try and help.

“CC tried to do a Final Strike, and Ash added in his own power to keep that from happening.  In the aftermath we were able to wipe out that kiss, including the Summoner.”

The look Jyrki gave him made Jason feel weird inside.  He knew Jyrki had an extraordinary respect for healers, but this seemed to be different.

“And clearly you were able to piece both men back together.”

“I knew you were a miracle worker, but seriously...” muttered Linde softly, clearly shaken.  But he'd been the unfortunate witness of a Final Strike that had worked.  The man had left a smoking hole three meters deep and eight meters across.  His sacrifice had worked, but at terrible cost.

"CC hadn't gotten any real training, all he had was a bit of jerry rigging and his own control so he didn't blow himself to kingdom come, but he and Ash were a real mess for a while."  Jason  winced a bit a teh memory before continuing.  The first day Ash had looked like so much raw meat, if he hadn't been a vampire they'd have lost him.  "After they started healing, and Ash was over his bonding fever, Luminor, Kiro and Mikko started seriously training CC, so now he's not goign to be at risk like that again."

“Mikko, who hid his ancestry from all of you.” observed Jyrki softly, as a vampire he was fully aware of how severe trauma could trip a vampire into a bonding fever if they had a highly compatible potential partner handy.

Jason winced again, but learning how well Nephilium camouflage could work had smarted.  Mikko had been under their noses for over a year before Sammy had converted and decided Mikko was his perfect match.

They'd just thought he had a Nephilium following him around, rather like how Lilith followed certain families, or that he'd ingested Nephilium blood and under great stress could put out a Nephilium flavored power pulse.  They also had bandied about the idea that he had another Nephilium half sibling floating around, they all knew about his younger sister.  Under normal, non-stressed circumstances Mikko just read as a well camouflaged sensitive or talent.  Even now, _knowing_ what to look for, Mikko read as a human until he dropped his masks deliberately.  At least learning he actually _was_ a Nephilium had let them cope enough to open the doors to working with the Panik team, who also had a Nephilium life bonded to one of their team members.  Though David was a third generation to Mikko's second, not that they'd really noticed any differences in power levels.

That reminded him, he needed to check in with Jonne and see how the Negative team was holding up.  They'd had Lilith visit Jonne's son not all that long ago, and then she'd scared the crap out of Japa and Kristian by dropping in for tea.  Well scared the crap out of Japa anyway, Kris seemed to have taken things pretty well in stride.

~0~

Luna watched.

Jyrki didn't seem to be too concerned, more like he was debating something that would shift how her Pack worked with the Brides Pack.

Then he looked up, right at CC.

“You protected my little brother, you protected his mate and you did so without thought to the danger to yourself.”

“I couldn't just leave them,” protested CC softly as he snuggled into Jake's side.

Jake sighed and hugged CC a little tighter and dropped light kiss on his loves hair, he had no space at all to comment, given his habits of jumping into things with both boots and figuring out things on the fly.  Jason had to grin, but Jake's habits had gotten them on good terms with a Fae enclave that was rather notorious for not being welcoming of outsiders.  Especially _human_ outsiders.

“And for that I thank you little brother.”

Jason blinked and swallowed hard as his ears popped.

Andy boggled and gaped in shock as he felt the distinct wave of another Prophet's powers moving and the almost audible click of CC being slotted into it.  A Prophet he hadn't felt at all until he'd moved.

“How the hell,” Andy started them froze when Jyrki turned that intent stare on him.

“I'm a trifle older than you, and come from a time where Prophets who couldn't hide what they were got taken into the Church whether or not they wished to be, or were burned at the stake for refusing.  Occasionally both.  A Prophets punishment for church Heresy was,” Jyrki paused, his face carefully blank.  “Unpleasant.”

Andy gulped and nodded as Ash wrapped both arms around him.  Both of them clearly thinking that 'unpleasant' was something of an understatement, and both were clearly a bit rattled by CC being linked into anther Prophet's power pool.  Their team was so tight knit that all of them would be feeling the shift and having to adjust for a while.

Jason sighed.  Theon was so going to pitch a fit about having missed this.  They had so little information on Jyrki's past that this was all but unprecedented.

~0~

“I don't get it.”

“Hmm?  Don't get what, darling?”

Jake twitched, but told himself for the thousandth time that Ville calling him darling didn't mean anything.  Ville calling him sweetheart also didn't mean anything; he used the terms liberally and seemed to enjoy it when they made people twitch.

“I don't get all this Prophet stuff, and how come after that healer kid pitched a fit CC is still safe here.”  He'd been trying to be very careful to not get thrown out again, just in case someone came after CC while he was sleeping.  Which to heal he had to do rather a lot of.

In daylight hours he wasn't always as successful as he hoped.

“Ah.” Offered Ville, then after a moment and a few smoke rings he offered his opinion.  “For CC's safety I think that no one _sane_ wishes to get Elder Healer Ewe annoyed at them.  You've seen how carefully most of them step around Jason, and _he's_ not an Elder yet.  That and anyone who has actually _met_ CC knows what a gentle soul he is.”

Jake managed a wan smile for that, but Ville had taken to reading to the still bedridden Destroyer when Jake's frustration got him chucked out of the Healers Hall on his ass.  No matter how hard he tried only Jason seemed to be willing to put up with him in full scale worry wart mode.  Julian said it was because he dealt with Sammy on a regular basis.  That made Jake wonder how bad Sammy got when _he_ was in full worry wart mode.

“For the 'Prophet stuff' as you put it, Jyrki is very old and he's got tricks hidden up his sleeves that many younger Prophets never knew they needed to know.  I think the phrase is he's forgotten more than many younger Prophets have learned. And look at Ash; if he's not worried about his life mate you have little real cause for true concern.”

Jake sighed but mentally thanked Ville for not treating him like an idiot, and for not outright saying he had nothing to worry about.  Just that he didn't have to worry about anyone trying to murder his baby in his sleep while Jake was dragging his ass out of a snowdrift for the hundredth time.

“Ash is Deviant though.”

Ville blew another smoke ring then pinned him with a look.

“Darling, that hardly has any bearing on him being protective of his mate.  Look at Sammy and Mikko.  Deviants tend to be uncomfortable if _anyone_ in their buffer zone is at risk.  I believe you and CC qualify.”

Jake blinked then slanted a look at Ville.

“Sammy's not Deviant though.”

The smile he got made Jake twitch.

“He _is_ though; just Sammy hides it better than Ash ever bothers to.”

Jake tried again.

“Sammy isn't as stupid overprotective though, on the steps coming down from the tower he lets Mikko follow him.”

Ville nodded.

“That's because Mikko can fly.  He's safer where he can use Sammy to vault into the air and protect them both from above.  Sammy knows that, he may not always _like_ it very much but he won't ever jeopardize Mikko.”  Ville smiled one of his slow conspiratorial smiles.  “It doesn't hurt that Mikko can twist him into a pretzel if he wants to.”

Jake groaned and buried his face in his hands.

“I didn't need to know that about their sex lives.”

All he got was a delighted chortle from Ville.

~0~

Andy leaned against the door and watched Jake and CC sleep.  Jason had taken the heaviest bandages off CC this morning and Andy had to admit that the burns looked a lot better than they had.

He'd never thought about cold producing burns, but the blistered and blackened skin of CC's arms, hands and sides had looked exactly like he'd been wrestling with a fire sprite, not little ice pixies. 

After a bath and round of bandaging of the worst burns CC was fed and laid down to rest.  Jake had crawled in with him and both had fallen asleep a few minutes afterwards.  Jake exhausted from worry and CC from the strain and pain of his injuries.

But he was healing, and healing fairly quickly given at the bottom of things he was just an empowered human.  His hands had been re-bandaged, but now his palms and fingers just looked like they'd been badly scalded, not like things had been burned bone deep and were about to fall off.

Jason said it was because the enclave recognized him as belonging and was supporting him.

That had made him blink.  He'd thought enclaves where just places; yes, with spaces of Power in them, but just real estate at the end. He'd also never really thought about the fat that lycan tended to go back to their home enclave if they could when seriously injured, and that they tended to come back with only minimal scarring.

Apparently he needed to do a bit more research.

Ash had already sat down with Jinxx; well more sat **on** him, and grilled him about the apparent sentience of this enclave.  Was it an isolated thing?  This place had been in the same space for hundreds of years, and having any ritual space that long made things happen.

According to Jinxx it wasn't isolated.  Enclaves _knew_ who belonged, knew who didn't and could do some very basic things without any direction from their Shaman and Elders.

Things that gave Andy the heebie jeebies.

They could deal with threats on their own.

Andy had always wondered why the very few child abusers in lycan ranks tended to live outside of their pack enclaves.

Now he knew.

The enclaves excluded them. 

The children that got abused were all born _after_ that exclusion, if they had set foot on pack ground the enclave itself would act as a very powerful ward and alert system.  A healer would suddenly feel a powerful compulsion to check that area, sometimes with guards if the enclave felt it was needed.  Sometimes if the lycan was close enough even being outside it's walls wouldn't be enough and a healer, a mystic or a shaman would get a random urge to go investigate things. 

Abused cubs _never_ stayed with an abuser once a pack heard about it, even if they weren't remotely related.  And abusers once they were known tended to not be a problem to any other children.  The packs were more stringent on **_that_** than any human police force Andy had ever seen.

It was like if the dead walked.

Suddenly a shaman would feel the urge to check the burial grounds, with Wardens.

It gave Andy the crawls, but Jinxx seemed to just shrug off the feeling of 'big brother is watching you' that knowledge of the system invoked in Andy.  But he freely admitted that he'd grown up with enclave wards and their peculiar semi sentience.  There were a lot of things that if you grew up with it were okay that an outsider would have conniptions over.  Now Andy got the point of a few people's snarky comments about lycan packs being socialist in nature.  He didn't agree, but he could see how it would look that way to a human observer.

CC sighed and snuggled his face closer into Jake's neck and got a soft broken croon out of the Mourner.

Andy had to smile; Jake hadn't even woken up a little, just cuddled CC closer.

Then he felt a familiar pair of arms winding around his middle and leaned slightly back into Ash.

“Julian put alert wards up; if anyone tries to get in with ill intent we'll all feel it.”  Ash said into his back as he snuggled his face into Andy's shoulder blades.

Andy sighed.  He still couldn't hide his deepest darkest thoughts from Ash.  Even before their bond had deepened enough to allow them to talk to each other in words over it Ash had had an uncanny instinct for what was bothering Andy, even if Andy couldn't articulate it yet.  Now, well, now it was sometimes just really fucking annoying.

Sammi said she and Jinxx had the same issue.  It was just a side effect of being very compatible.  Then she pointed at Sammy and Mikko and startlingly at Yu and Kiro.

Sammy and Mikko, Andy could understand, they acted like two halves of a whole, and both were non human.  Yu was born to a Slayer family, but still at the fundamental level human.  Kiro was a powerful and talented Summoner, but again was fundamentally human.  He'd had no idea they pair could do the talk at each other in their heads trick.

Hell, some days he still had trouble wrapping his head around the fact that a Summoner; as in a person who could _call up_ demons, and a Slayer; the person who _killed_ demons as a calling, got along at all.  And Andy knew damn good and well they more than 'got along', he'd been roomed beside them a time or three and every time had wished for silencing wards as he really did not need to know that much about their sex lives.

They were worse than Jake and CC doing 'yay, we survived' sex.

Andy blinked in confusion.

It wasn't that he didn't think there would be healer assistants in and out of CC's room, he knew there would be.  Just he recognized the nurses, assistants, whatever they were, and he recognized this lycan, and as far as he knew Luna _wasn't_ a healer of any flavor.

But here she was, creeping in, shifting and hopping lightly up on the foot of CC's bed to curl up in a ball more like CC's cat did than Jake's dog.

But she looked at him for a long moment, then, with a deliberation that left Andy slightly boggled, she closed her eyes.

~0~

Ash stifled a snicker in Andy's back and felt one sharp elbow poking back into his ribs.  The fizz of annoyance from his mate made him laugh harder until Andy turned in his arms and scowled down at him.

“Explain.”

Ash looked up into Andy's blue eyes and couldn't resist the impulse to kiss his mate.

It got him an annoyed sigh and an abbreviated kiss back, but Ash could feel the faint hum of affection down their bond.

“Ashley,” Andy started again, so Ash answered his unspoken question.

“After Merle flipped Luna started sleeping with CC and Jake. Just to be paranoid.”

Andy's blink was puzzled and Ash had to smile at the confused look on his love's face.

“Okay?”

“She's one of Jyrki's team Andy, so she's got a certain amount of status even...”  Ash broke off, he'd overheard some things and now wasn't really sure if they were relevant.

“Ashley...”

Ash sighed and caved.  It wasn't like Andy couldn't fish it out of his thoughts if he wanted to.  Sometimes he'd make Andy fish just for the amusement, but not today.  Not when it was something that might become important later.

“She's sterile.”

That made Andy look at him like he was an idiot.

“So what?  It's not like it impacts how she fights or makes her stupid.”

The soft snort made them both jump.

“Thank you for that.  But most lycan will still count her as lesser because she can't breed young for the pack.”  Baize stepped out of the shadows of the hallway and walked quietly toward them.

“Then most lycan need to pull their heads out of their asses.”

Ash barely kept his snort of laughter behind his teeth; Andy sometimes was about as subtle as a pickup going through a plate glass window.  But the smile the other vampire gave them was quietly relieved.

“Jason happens to agree with you and Archzie has gotten into more than a couple fights because of his opinion.”  The look Baize shot into CC's room was filled with so much affection it made Ash sober and look at the other man more closely.

“You love her.”

Ash blinked at Andy's off the wall comment but then he smiled into Andy's shoulder.

Baize blinked then managed a small smile.

“Yes.”  Anything else he was going to say got lost in the sudden urgent feeling that something bad was coming.

Andy swore under his breath and Ash shuddered at the creepy crawly feeling climbing up his spine.

But they both were moving toward the Hall entrance at a sprint long before the eerie call of an alarm began sounding over the enclave.

~0~

The larger portion of four Hunter teams appearing at one of the entrances to the Enclave at the same time as the Wardens arrived made a few of the younger Wardens give them a long second look.  The older ones were more focused on what was coming up the path.

Jyrki swore and was moving even as the figure rounded the bend of the road leading up to them at a dead sprint.

That pale blonde hair was unmistakable to him.

A breath later and Sammy was hefting Mikko up into the air and following at a sprint to get between the slender form and whatever was after him.

Andy blinked as the slim form resolved itself into a man he knew by reputation, but had never met in person.  Jonne Aarron.  He was carrying a small boy and was out of breath, but panting what sounded like another name as the Hunters and Wardens gathered around him.

“Kris, behind...”

One of the Wardens grabbed him by the scruff and wanted to know what was behind them.  She was trying to be gentle, but Andy suspected her hand would leave bruises on Jonne's pale skin.

“Warg,”  Jonne panted out as he tucked the child's head under his chin.  From the similarity in their faces Andy suspected the child was Jonne's son.

Andy blinked in confusion. 

“What the heck is a warg?” 

Luna had been right beside him, but when she heard 'warg' she snarled, changed and was flat out _gone_.

“Okay?  A Warg is bad, what the fuck?”

“Think Hellhound.” offered Jussi grimly.  “Big, smelly and ugly hellhound.”  He reached an arm around Jonne and the Warden let him go.

“Fucking peachy.”  Ash checked his weapons and offered his ammo to Jinxx for a quick blessing.  Jake was right there, and to his sick shock so was CC.  “Fucking hell, Cese, you shouldn't be out of bed!”

“I already told him that.” groused Jake as he let Jinxx bless his ammo and weapons.

“I'm not going to lay there like a lump,” CC answered as he carefully cut the bandages on his hands off.  He'd learned the hard way that anything other than his blessed leather gloves tended to go up in literal flames when he used his powers.  “Not when I can help.”

“Jesus those things are ugly.”  Ash muttered as he lifted his pistol and sighted down it at the large shapes coming up the path.

Andy swallowed hard.  He recognized the pale red gold wolf that had one of the big, ugly things by the throat.  Mutant bastard of a mix between a small horse and a pit bull.  With a bad case of the mange he amended as the Shaman began casting to light up the area.  Luna was so small against the mottled gray-black mass that was the warg.

He set his feet and began quietly chanting.

He could see a few human shaped figures; it looked like Jyrki trying to get another man to run for safety.  But the other man was busy skewering one of the warg to try and kill it.  And Sammy was busy trying to make sure none of them got pounced from behind.

“Okay, ignorant little human here.  How the fuck do we kill them.”

“Remove the heads,” growled one of the Warders as she changed into her hybrid form and charged into the fray.

“Zombie rules then.  Great.  Jinxx, tell me these are AP rounds?”

“Sorry bro, just standards.”  Jinxx watched intently, his powers weren't best suited for this fight and he was clearly _hating_ it.

Andy blinked when he heard CC's abstracted voice tell Jake to sight on the creatures heads, and that he'd do the rest.

Andy turned back to the fight and gulped.  They had a lot of friendlies down there.  He hoped to god Jake didn't miss.  He had no idea what to think about CC's 'I'll do the rest ' comment, he had no idea what the man thought he could accomplish with his hands so burned he couldn't throw his power balls.

Jake grimly tucked his back up back in his belt and sighted his primary with the easy two handed grip they all used.  CC settled in behind him and had both his hands shoved up under Jake's shirt so they could rest, skin to skin, on Jake's waist.

He heard Sammy swear when the first shot rang out.  Not that Jake was shooting at him, but because the bullet suddenly flared red and when it hit the warg Sammy was distracting it exploded, taking most of the creatures head with it.

Andy focused everything he had on a chant that would lend Jake clear vision and steady hands.

He was going to **_need_** them.

~0~

Kris panted and leaned back into Sammy's back and had the fleeting wish for a good solid axe.  An axe would do so much better at taking these damned warg's heads off their blocky shoulders. His blades were far more suited to skewering things than lopping parts off.  From the tone of Sammy's mutterings he was thinking similar thoughts, but his sword had a much heavier blade, more broadsword than long sword.

Jyrki appeared, covered in blood and smoking from the steam.

“Don't bite them, they taste disgusting.”

“I could have used _that_ warning about ten minutes ago,” Sammy snarked back.

“I was a bit busy.”

A loud bang, followed by an aborted scream from one of the warg.  Kris looked and blinked.

It was missing most of its head and doing an eerie almost slow motion tumble as it fell.

Luna had another warg by the throat and was slowing it down when another bang sounded and the warg she'd been dragging down by pure will alone went down.  She gave herself a hard shake that sent blood and other unmentionables flying off her fur, looked at them as though to assure herself they were still in one piece and went after another warg that had one of the younger wardens by the shoulder and was shaking her violently.

~0~

Jyrki realized what Luna was doing, and grabbed Kris by the shoulder and shoved him firmly toward the gate.  Much as it galled him this _was **not**_ a fight he was capable of winning.  The field belonged to the Wardens and their massive hybrid wolf forms, not his smaller and more fragile human shape.

He flinched at another bang, and another warg going down in a fountain of blood and brains.

Whoever was shooting had preternaturally good aim to hit the enemy and not the allies.

He just wanted to know where in the nine hells they'd gotten explosive rounds.

Then he was screaming in pain.

Distantly he was aware that Kris had stabbed the warg that had bitten him and that it had let go to go after the more painful target.

But there was a flash of red gold, a scream of pure rage and the warg was screaming as Kris and Sammy dragged him as fast as they could toward safety.

~0~

“Hoooly _shit_.” gasped Christian, but then he was sighting the crossbow in his hands again.  The poison of moly and gods star wouldn’t kill the warg outright, but it would slow them down.  With a pack this size any little bit helped.

“Go Luna,” breathed Ash, then he blanched as the gentle wolf girl he knew seemed to grow in stature and sank teeth and talons into the warg that had hurt Jyrki.  She yanked her head back and slammed her talons down and left the wargs head dangling from its body by a few threads of sinew.

“When this is over, remind me to get violently sick,” said Andy in an offhand way. But Ash knew as soon as his focus wasn't on helping Jake and CC blast warg from a distance he would get violently ill.

After seeing Luna take a hybrid form for the first time and the mayhem she was inflicting Ash was pretty sure he'd be right there beside his bondmate throwing up.

If he didn't just faint as soon as things were done.

“Trust me, when this is over, I'll be right there with you.” agreed Christian as he accepted a cocked and loaded crossbow from Linde and handed back the one he'd just fired.  There was only so much room, and Linde was strong enough to cock the heavy crossbows barehanded so Christian, who was the better marksman, could keep firing.

Jason was busy, patching up Jyrki's leg as best he could.

Ash quietly breathed a sigh of relief that Jussi had grabbed Jonne and little Seppo and hauled them back toward the safety of the Hall.  They'd get locked into one of the innermost chambers with the elderly, infirm, pregnant bitches and children.  They'd be safe.

The kid didn't need more nightmares than he was already bound to have from this.

Then suddenly there was silence.

A long empty stillness as the Wardens checked over the dead warg.

It went on until one of them nosed one of their own fallen and they didn't move.

Ash swallowed hard when that red gold shape pointed her nose to the sky and howled.

Jason shoved him out of the way and sprinted, shifting mid-stride to get down there faster.

Ash grabbed for CC and missed as he ran past.

Jake was sobbing and swearing, hot on CC's heels.

~0~

Maria, it had to be Maria.  She was the smallest of the warden bitches; she hadn't fully mastered her hybrid shift yet, she was still too young for it to be natural.

Jason swore as he slammed back into human shape and planted both hands on the still honey brown shape.  She was still changed, that was something.  Not much, but something.

The red gold hybrid helped him turn Maria over so he could see her wounds better.

He swore again.

If she changed to human now she'd die for sure.  The warg had crushed her shoulder in hybrid form, if she changed that would take out a chunk of her throat as well.

Jason felt hands on his shoulders and swore savagely.  Why couldn't he have been born a touch healer like his grandfather?  He could feel the power threads, they were right _there_ , just out of his reach.  Agonizingly, heartbreakingly out of his reach.

He felt another set of hands somehow finding bare skin to latch onto and wanted to shake both off, but then looked up.

Mikko and CC.

Jason blinked and felt the shift of the power pool that was Andy under him.

“Are you sure,”

Mikko nodded.

“Take what you need, if I'd been faster...” CC's voice broke.

Jason turned back, closed his eyes and reached.

So close, he had the power now, the threads were _right there_ hecould **_feel_** his mental fingers slipping off them...

Jason was almost in tears of frustration, he could feel Maria's life slipping away.

He felt a nudge of a cold wet nose and his eyes popped open in shock.

_~you have to ask~_

“What?”  He looked up into familiar sad green eyes.  Luna, still in her hybrid form.  His mind wondered if she'd gotten stuck, she still got stuck as a wolf quite routinely.

_~I don't know why, but you have to ask~_

“Help me?  Please?”

_~it will hurt you and you will be forever changed~_

“I have to try.”

_~yes~_

White hot power flooded him and he could finally reach out and grab those tenuous threads and pour strength and life back into them.

~0~

Christian dropped to his knees and screamed; distantly he could hear Julian's screams echoing his and knew they were both frantically groping down their link for Jason.

Jason was burning.

~0~

Jake gasped and crumpled to a heap beside CC.

Andy yelped as he felt something in the back of his mind open up and the power behind it flooded out.  With the power came knowledge on how to use it.

Ash yelped and grabbed for his mate to keep him upright as Jake dragged himself to his knees by main force of will and leaned into CC's side.

In the back of his mind he could hear Andy chanting and hear the counterpoint that Jinxx used when they were warding a space for ritual work.  But for the first time in his life as a bonded vampire he couldn't figure out what Andy was thinking, Andy was so focused that there literally wasn't room for anything else.

Ash whimpered and clung to his mate and watched as Jason worked on the dying Warden.

Was it his imagination or was it getting brighter out here?

~0~

Kris really and with all his heart wanted to fall over and sleep for a month.  But he had to make sure Jyrki was alright.  He had to find Jonne and Seppo and make sure they were alright.  Nice as the lycan healer was she really wasn't helping him accomplish those two simple goals.

Then Julian had started screaming like the proverbial banshee and the healers had gone crazy it seemed like.

He'd been able to find Jyrki then.  Pale and still in one of the little flat beds on the floor of the main hall.  Archzie was beside him watching as Jussi finished squeezing a blood bag into his arm and started on another.  Burton was kneeling with both hands resting on Jyrki's shoulders, like he'd had to help restrain the vampire in a fit of delirium and was just waiting in case he was needed again.

Kris swallowed hard.  Jyrki's leg looked mauled, but at least it wasn't bleeding everywhere like his mind said it should be.

Then Julian stopped screaming, as abruptly as he'd begun and just, well, just fell over.  One of the healers scooped Julian up like he weighed nothing and laid him on one of the larger beds.

After a huge commotion at the Hall entrance several more people were brought in.

Kris let out a small cry when he recognized Christian and then Jason.  Both limply unconscious but otherwise unmarked as they were carried like little children in the arms of two Wardens.  Both were carefully laid on either side of Julian and covered.  Then the healers were swarming the Wardens.  Checking for injuries he assumed.

The next person he recognized was CC being carried like a child in the arms of Volstag in his massive hybrid form.  The shaman carefully laid CC down and shifted tiredly back to his human shape as his mate Talla laid Jake down beside his mate and the pair of them covered them like CC and Jake were their own sons.

Kris began a frantic search.

Jonne and Seppo had to be in here somewhere.

He searched until Talla caught his shoulders and gave him a firm shake and pointed him toward an opening door.

“Kristian!”

“Jonne!”  He caught Jonne tightly in his arms, kissed him like the world was ending and then asked, “Seppo?”

“Safe, not a mark on him.”

Kris felt light-headed in relief, but then the world slid sharply sideways and went dark.

~0~

“Kris!” Jonne grabbed for Kris in fright as he began to sag.

“Shh, cub.  Your mate is exhausted.”  Talla caught Kris and with Jonne's clumsy help got him laid down on another of the rough mattresses laid out in the hall for triage. Talla insisted Jonne lie down as well; she knew that as soon as he stayed still for more than a moment he'd be just as out as his mate.

Fortunately most of the beds weren't needed for more than a place to lay an exhausted body.  She had to smile though when a tiny blond child darted through the crowd, bee-lining with uncanny accuracy to the bed that held his sire.

“Papa?  Papa Kris?”  Huge blue eyes looked up at her with absolutely no fear and Talla had to smile.

“Sleeping little one.  Here is a space for you as well.”

The child hesitantly stepped closer.

“Papa Kris didn't get hurt by the bad demon wolves?”

“No little one, tired, but not hurt.”  She smiled a bit internally at the child's description of the warg.

“Papa Kris wouldn't let them get us.”

Talla smiled and shook out a blanket as the child cuddled down between his fathers.

“No little one, your Papa was very brave.”  She gently covered them and watched until she was sure the child was asleep.  She whispered the charm for a restful sleep over all three and then began a quiet set of personal rounds.

The vampire Lord Black was deeply asleep with his little mate in his arms, blanketed by soft black wings.  The little wing-kin was too exhausted to even try and hide what he was.

Though after his actions tonight it was unlikely that anyone the Pack would breathe a word of it to any outsider.  Humans and their laws could be so silly and short sighted, blacklisting an entire species on the fear of the actions of a few.

Lord Linnankivi, she refused to call him 69, was being tended by his kin and appeared to be healing well even though he had yet to wake.  The bitch that followed him had surprised all the Wardens kin.  Not that she was loyal to her chosen pack; even a blind cub could have seen _that_.  She's shocked them by taking a hybrid form and by being utterly fearless in battle.

The little bitch had shifted back down to her small human shape and was curled in the arms of one of the other vampires.  He was going to get a bit of ribbing from the Pack for not being beside his bitch in battle, but realistically a fight with a warg pack was no place for anything shaped like a man or a simple wolf.  And that little bitch had been the first of the pack to engage the warg.  Jyrki and Sammy had only been attempting to get the little humans to safety, not terribly _smart_ of them, but very brave.  Warg could tear a vampire to pieces and leave the remains to crisp to nothing in the light of dawn.

She watched as the Mystic for the Brides pack checked his brothers.  The little vampire was limply asleep beside his mate.  The Prophet really needed to be held down and fed properly, he was far too thin.  And as used to battle as they clearly were, battle with a large warg pack was another order of brutality, both men had been understandably violently ill before dropping.

Talla's eyes drifted over to the last pair of that tiny pack.  How anyone could consider a properly in pack Destroyer as dangerous to his own she'd never understand.  That little thing was so skinny a little nudge should break him in two, he'd done something to lend his mate his powers so they could be aimed with more control that his wounded body could muster and it had made the difference.  The only Warden in danger of being lost was Maria; all the others, although wounded, would live to fight again.

Whatever he'd done it was unprecedented in that they'd had no deaths from a warg pack of at least thirty.

“Elder.”

Talla turned and stared into the eyes of the slender blond vampire from Valo's little pack.

“Yes child?”  She found it amusing, especially given she strongly suspected this vampire was older than she was.  But _he_ was the one who'd caller _her_ elder.  The flicker of a smile told her she was likely correct.  Then he sobered and she felt her heart stutter.

“Houns scouts are back.”

She closed her eyes.

“How bad.”

“Better and worse than expected.  One of the Warden scouts is dead; she took five of the warg with her.”

Talla closed her eyes.  Petra had been the only bitch on scout duty, but five warg was more than respectable alone.  She must have been overrun in a bare breath; otherwise she'd have set a warning flare up so the rest of the pack would know something was wrong.

But that also meant someone from the south had sent a very large warg pack loose in her pack's territory.  Warg normally came down from the north, and even then a natural pack was far smaller than what they'd faced tonight.

“Better is that he's found no signs of stragglers or solitaries.  Just the remains of the campsite Jonne and Kris had set up.”  Linde grimaced.  “They apparently had spoken to Petra and Jon when they came in and gotten permission beforehand.”

Talla nodded, that explained how the humans had come to be involved.  And she fully approved of humans responsibly bringing young into contact with the wilds.  She just hoped this incident didn't leave the human's cub with a phobia of wild spaces.

The vampire gave her a small and charmingly courtly bow, and went to check on his pack leader.

Talla sighed and watched as her mate went with the rest of the Pack elders to argue out what to do about the warg, and whoever it was that had sent them.

~0~

Jinxx grimaced at the smell coming off the pyre being used to clean up warg corpses.  With that reek he wasn't terribly surprised that none of his brothers had wanted anything even faintly resembling meat for breakfast these last few days.  To his amusement little Seppo had taken great glee in cheerfully crunching his bacon and making every human male nearby wince.

The kid was coping better than the adults were, at least so far.

He still wondered why Mikko had come back from the fight with a handful of gray and black wing feathers. All he knew was that he'd been closeted with the elder Shaman of the pack and hadn't really been seen outside of a few glimpses in the evenings when he was curling up with Sammy.

The healers had thrown a fit when CC had been awake and aware enough to pay attention to it.  Scolding him fiercly for ricking his sill healing body in a fight with a warg pack, but even the most stodgy of them had to admit CC's actions had made for fewer casualties on the lycan side of the fight.  Only Perta had been lost, and Maria was making a slow recovery from her near fatal wounds.

Jinxx grimaced and rubbed at his shoulder and the healing ink there.

His pack was going to pitch a wobbly at him, going overseas officially to tour with his band and coming backJäädytetty tuulen Arvo and Syvä vesi Poukama adopted.  His mother was going to have a full scale conniption no matter how happy the Elders were once they calmed down.  Jinxx paced back to the little cubby of a room where Jake and CC were resting and looked down at the pair tangled, almost like normal, together in the bed.  He couldn't see the ink he knew was decorating CC's shoulder, but he could see the almost delicate interlaced lines of the stylized glyphs for wind born ice and deep dark waters on his other brother’s arm. 

The almost purple black color indicated his status as an adopted who had been adopted as an adult.  In the center of the almost circular set of glyphs was the blue mark that designated him as a guardian. 

Jinxx knew his own central mark was a more true purple designating him as a mystic.  He'd be surprised to see that Ash and Andy's marks had also been blue, but the glyphs were ones he'd never seen before.

CC's central mark had been red, but the glyph was a guardians.

He wasn't sure what to think of that.  It was significant, he was sure of it.  But the symbolism wasn't from his pack, so he was left just as lost as his human brothers.

Jinxx looked up as he heard Andy's voice coming closer.

He'd have to ask his Sammi or Sandra if they could find enough information for him to figure things out.

Something was telling him that it might be very important to know what those tiny marks really meant.

~0~

Mikko sighed and gently dabbed a bit of salve on Sammy new ink.  Sammy had already dosed the marks on his shoulder and even gone on to wrap a bit of bandage over it to make sure it healed quickly and cleanly.

Jason hadn't bothered to hide his smile; the other healers had rolled their eyes and then smiled indulgently as well.  But they'd already seen how Sammy fussed over his people.

Theon was still miffed he'd been locked in with the 'women and children' as he put it.  But Vivian had been helping guard that inner chamber, just in case the warg pack broke though the outer lines of defense.  Even being told he was part of a last line of defense hadn't really helped.  Vivian would be sleeping on his own for a day or two, at least until Theon calmed down enough to see sense and forgave his vampire mate.

“If I could have gotten away with it...”

Mikko smiled and began wrapping a strip of clean linen with more care than was needed around Sammy's biceps.

“I know.  But you know I was of better use where you were.  And I wasn't hurt; you got steamrolled by a warg.”

Sammy grimaced, not all of his bruises had healed yet.

“I didn't get bitten though.”

“No.  No you didn't.”

Both of them looked over to where Jyrki lay sleeping soundly on a pallet and covered with a soft blanket.  Burton lay beside him dozing, his head comfortably pillowed on the vampire's shoulder.

“We're lucky it wasn't worse, and that Burton was right here and realized what was happening.”

“I still think it was funny that he was mock chasing Julian to try and make Jyrki jealous.”

Sammy let out a small bark of laughter.

“It's a good thing Christian and Jason could smell that he wasn't serious, or he'd have gotten maimed.”

Mikko let out a soft 'pift' sound, even Julian had known Burton wasn't serious.  He'd still enjoyed the knowledge that men other than his mates found him attractive.  He'd been the plain, gawky little brother for too many years to be quite over feeling a bit like an ugly duckling.

“Julian still needs reminding he's attractive.”

“Really?” Sammy slanted a look up at him, and Mikko could see the mischief dancing behind his eyes even as the corners of his mouth began to turn upwards.

He expected the slow stalk Sammy did as he rose and turned.

“Does he now?” teased Sammy mildly as he loomed over his mate and pressed him gently backwards into the bit of padding that had served them as a bed last night.  “I wouldn't let Christian and Jason hear you say that.”

Mikko couldn't stop the burble of laughter.

“Why?  They know I belong with you.”  Mikko tangled his hands in the honey blond hair of his mate.

Sammy smiled as he leaned down.

“Do you now?”

“Always and forever,” Mikko breathed as Sammy swept in and began kissing him.

They missed the fond smiles of the healers as they went about their work.

~0~

Andy stared blindly down at his phone.

It was such a little thing, just a fragile bit of plastic and electronics.  It had landed them in more trouble than he'd ever imagined.

It had also gotten them _out_ of more trouble than he'd have ever believed.

He'd almost had a heart failure when he'd gotten the text from CC, telling him where he was and that he was trying to help rescue what he thought were normal’s from ice fairies.

Joutuni-nix.

Ice fairies on steroids, with a serious attitude problem.

Then getting picked up by a lycan pack.  The local pack at that and being carried off to their enclave because CC's actions had kept one of their members and his mate from becoming ice pops.

Meeting more lycan, more Hunters.

Meeting another Prophet.

The warg and whatever the hell CC had done to pass his powers through Jake's hands into his bullets.

He'd thought that CC and Jake could do the talk in each other's heads thing that he and Ash could do.

He'd been wrong.

Now though, after whatever he'd done with Jake and then with Mikko and Luna to help Jason heal the one Warden who had been nearly killed, now they could.

Andy looked up at the sky and wondered if it looked as freaky to others when he and Ash were speaking down their bond.

Jason had woken up from whatever they'd done with a killer headache, one that had Christian and Julian down as well.  But Mikko had helped one of the older healers brew up something that helped some, at least in that it let the poor battered trio sleep.  It wasn't something that could be used for long, apparently it had some nasty side effects if you were stupid enough to get addicted to it, but in the short term it was all that worked.

They'd been adopted.

Jinxx's parents and brothers were going to flip.

Ash's family had done a long distance flip out already because the idiot vampire had made the mistake of answering one of his Aunt's texts while still half asleep.

They really needed to steal and hide his phone after a fight.  He sent some of the strangest texts after a fight.

Sandra was going to kill them.

She'd even informed Andy of this little fact via a three am text. He hoped they were here long enough for her temper to cool off a little.  Then she'd only tickle them until they begged, not literally kill them.

He hoped anyway.

Andy looked back down into the courtyard from his perch on the Hall's walkway.

Luna.

She'd had a massive status change since the warg fight.

Had it only been two days ago?  That seemed impossible.

But back to Luna.

She'd taken on hybrid form after Jyrki had been bitten by a warg and proceeded to rip that warg apart with extreme prejudice.  Then she'd gone on to do... something... even the healers weren't sure what she'd done to help Jason heal Maria enough that she wouldn't die of her injuries.

Whatever she'd done it had worked.

Jason had marks on his palms now.  Andy would never have noticed them if one of the healers hadn't seen them and flipped out.  They were barely there seven pointed stars, Jason's father had been shocked, and the healers had been murmuring in near awe.  Apparently Jason's grandfather had worn marks like that while he was alive.

Andy had no idea why it was important, but figured sooner or later someone would explain it to him, that or Ash would just ask and charm people into not murdering him.

But back to Luna again.

She had the same barely there star marking her forehead.  Overnight she'd gone from tolerated as a peripheral member of the pack because of her relationship with Archzie to being a fully fledged and valued member.

Sterile or not she was a bitch to be reckoned with now.

Bazie had been growling at hopeful males since they woke up and Jinxx had found it funny as hell.

“No, I don't know what the star marking's mean.”

Andy jumped then half turned to scowl up at Jinxx as he hopped down off the roof and settled on the walkway beside him.

“Sorry, thought you heard me.”

Andy huffed a breath of air up through the hair hanging over his face.

“Yeah, right, plain ol' human hearing here bro.”

Jinxx smiled as he settled in close enough that Andy could feel the warmth coming off his body.

“You do better than you think.”  Jinxx's eyes trailed down to where Jussi was playing a game of chase with Luna and Ville.  “I never thought we'd be here.”  Jinxx folded his arms on the railing and rested his chin on his arms.  “Mama is already flipping out.  I never should have gotten her a smart phone.”

Andy couldn't stop the lopsided grin that escaped.

“Burning through the texts?”

“Like you wouldn't believe.  Sammi is already talking to Sandra though, about our marks.”  Jinxx tapped his left shoulder so Andy knew for sure what he meant.

“You think they are important too.”

“Adoption marks are always important.  My home pack has no real ties to the packs here. Ireland yeah, but there's only a small pack left there.  If I wasn't already married with cubs I'd be having the bitch's doing some serious enticing.”

Andy couldn't help the gurgle of laughter.

“Good thing we're all taken then?”

Jinxx nodded.

“Oh yeah.  Very good thing.  But I still about killed myself laughing when Jake realized what the one was offering last night.”

Andy blinked blankly.

“What?”

Jinxx blinked at him.

“You missed it?”

“Missed what?”

“One of the bitches, Amie I think, offered to bear cubs for Jake and CC.”

Andy felt his jaw drop and boggled at Jinxx.

“Are you **_serious_**?!”

Jinxx smiled crookedly back.

“Heart attack man.  Jake spluttered and floundered around, it was kind of cute.”

“How did he get out of _that_?”

Jinxx looked back down into the courtyard where the game of tag now had Kris, Jonne and Jonne's little boy.

“I think just the fact he was so shocked she offered helped get him out of it.  That and CC's little remark about how it wouldn't be fair to the kid to possibly grow up without a dad.  He was so earnest about it and how we're Hunters that I really think he won over more girls than he realizes.”

Andy sobered.

“It is a risk isn't it.”  His eyes rested on Kris.  He knew for the man's Slayer genes to become active something bad had to have happened to one or both parents.

“Yeah,” agreed Jinxx.  “Trust me; I try not to think about it too hard.  Sammi would have the boys to keep her here, and bitches are tougher than us males ever really want to admit to...” Jinxx voice trailed off as he watched Luna shift back just in time to be swept up in Bazie's arms.  “I wonder...” he mused.

“Jinxx?”

“Luna, we know almost nothing about her.”

“So?  We can ask.”  Andy wasn't sure he saw the point of whatever it was about the bitch that was nagging at Jinxx.

Jinxx looked up and locked their eyes together.

Andy froze at the seriousness he saw behind his brother's eyes.

“Andy, pack is everything to a lycan.  We know _nothing_ about hers.  According to Jyrki they have a set of ID numbers off her and that's it.”  He tapped his left knee meaningfully.  Andy knew on that ankle was tattooed a series of number and letters that identified Jinxx as being a properly registered, born in the USA lycan.  “They don't even know what her real name is.”

Andy stilled, his mind working like mad.

“You think we need to ask Sandra.”

“Jyrki asked me to.”

Andy blinked.  If Jyrki had asked he didn't know why Jinxx hadn't already passed the question on.

“I'm waiting until we get home.  I have a feeling we don't want to throw her numbers around where we aren't one hundred percent sure they won't get found out by anyone else.”

Andy swallowed hard, and then nodded.

“We'll be back on the road soon, making up those missed shows.”

Jinxx nodded and looked back down at where the small game of tag had turned into a free for all with a good portion of the enclave's cubs involved.

“And then we'll head home,” agreed Jinxx.

Home sounded really fucking good right now.


	21. Sacrifices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ville was perfectly happy just being the singer and guitarist for his band, but then he got kidnapped and everything he thought he knew got turned inside out.
> 
> At least he's still got Anssi and Janne... even if they aren't exactly like he'd always thought they were.
> 
> Then again, he isn't all he thought he was anymore either...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The concept of a sorcerer who can skip bodies with their own children is borrowed from Mercedies Lackey and the basis of the Demon's Wife power ritual is borrowed from Natasha Duncan-Drake. You can find their works on Amazon.com and Amazon UK

 Ville panted and tried not to sob in pain as one of the lunatics over him kept on carving little patterns into his skin and painting the stinging cuts with some rank smelling liquid that made things burn. His arms and legs were screaming at him from how he was tied spread eagled over the altar and how he'd fought to get free.

His kidnappers had been extraordinarily careful of doing him real injury, and that gave him a tiny shred of hope that he might make it out of this alive.  Ville also clung to the thought that he'd been alone when he'd been swept up on and snatched off the street as he'd walked to get food for the apartment.  Janne and Anssi were safe; Janne and Anssi would have reported him missing.

They would be looking for him.

He just had to hang on.

~0~

Gunter frowned.

The channel wasn't cutting the patterns he'd expected into the sacrifices skin.  The paint wasn't going on the way he'd planned.

He'd wanted a proper, virile young man for this, to help restore his son.  But these patterns hinted at things that were frankly a touch disturbing.

Gunter had chosen this one because he was young, with long strong limbs and a face fair enough to belong to a woman.  The long tangled snake like mats of gold highlighted red brown hair attached to the young man's head didn't help, but Gunter had wanted his son to come back to him with a full head of hair, not the burned and melted scalp he'd suffered with.

He'd wanted his son to come back to him whole.

This young man had everything he needed, and was talented, even had young women flinging themselves at him.

How was it possible that the marks he was seeing were coming up?  How could any man who made his living like this one had still be pure in any sense of the word?

He could easily make himself go through the rituals before; he'd been secure in the thought that this young man was far from pure.  Debauching a man who was already steeped in perversion wouldn't have been any concern, but debauching a man who was innocent...

Now, with the marks of purity coming up under the deft knife of the channel he wasn't sure he could force himself to continue.

But the rituals had begun.  To abort them now could well kill everyone.  The man he'd gone to for this wasn't one to be trifled with.  But he was the only one who could save his son.

He had to continue.

For the sake of his men.

For the sake of his son.

He would do this terrible thing.

Gunter took the cup offered to him and drank without questioning, and that made the man who brought it smile in wicked glee as the cup dropped from nerveless fingers.

Behind him the two men he’d brought were neatly and silently cut down and their blood collected.

~0~

Sammy settled into position and grimly looked down into the little hollow around an ancient sacrificial stone.  He really hated it when Mikko was right to this degree.

_~I'm not what one would call thrilled either love.  ~_

Sammy grimaced and watched as the rest of the team got into position.

 _~Why couldn't this have just been some conservative twit misinterpreting a harmless Beltane ritual?~_  He thought up at where his life mate and lover was circling overhead, well above the light cast by the torches and hidden even from his sharp eyes above the trees tender greening leaves.

_~You know we aren't that lucky very often. ~_

_~Now would still have been nice? ~_  His eyes tracked movement that didn't look human and was far too large to be a dog. _~Is that Christian directly across from me?~_

_~Yes.  We're ready to move now.  Vivian has locked them out of their bunker and away... Oh bright goddess… ~_

Sammy felt the surge of horror and recognition from Mikko.

_~Mikko? ~_

_~They have Ville Malja down there... Janne and Anssi's Ville. ~_

Sammy barely stopped before he swore out loud.  Janne Heikkonen had known Lovex was a Hunter team, Anssi Nordberg hadn’t, but had figured it out when he’d followed Janne over to the apartment Sammy shared with Mikko when they were in town.  Janne had realized someone in the supernatural community had snatched Ville, he'd felt the traces of a confusion spell at the place Ville had last been seen, and had come to beg for help from the only people he thought would even try to find his friend.

 _~You're sure?~_   He asked as he shifted closer to the edge of the clearing and confirmed Mikko's I.D. of their poor victim.  Ville had been missing for over two weeks; his band mates had been frantic and beginning to lose any hope of seeing him again.  Christian had been tracing leads, but hadn’t been making much progress.  They'd come to check on this on a tip from a police acquaintance, not expecting to find their missing man.

They hadn't expected to find much other than a group of idiots making a hash of things really, but Mikko had had a very bad feeling about coming out here tonight.  That bad feeling had them coming with the whole team and armed for bear.  Now Sammy was profoundly glad they had.  Even with all seven of them this group might be a hell of a challenge if they knew what they were doing.

The police insistence that Ville was an adult and allowed to vanish if he wanted to had driven both of Ville's band mates almost to despair.  For them to find Ville here, now, hinted at very bad things, things that implied that someone on the police force was involved.

The low level chanting changed and two groups moved toward where the slender singer was tied down.

 _~Yes, ~_ Mikko confirmed, now that Sammy really didn't need it.

Sammy started getting a creepy feeling crawling up his spine, the kind of creepy feeling that said there was power being raised.  A **lot** of power, and not the positive sort that was usual at this time of year.

One of the groups was two big men cradling the twisted and burned form of someone between them.  Male or female, Sammy couldn't tell, they'd been burned and scarred so badly he was surprised the poor person was still even alive.  That implied this had started as a rejuvenation ritual, pity those tended to involve human sacrifices, usually plural, sometimes massively so, and the preferred sacrifices tended to be children and young women.

The other group was a trio of men herding another large man who staggered like he was drunk, or drugged to the eyeballs, toward the altar.  Something that nagged at him was the first group and the drugged or drunken man were robed differently than the second, larger group, and they had a secondary group lurking in a way that frankly made him uneasy.

The slender man who had been carving and painting patterns onto the sacrifices, Ville's Sammy corrected himself; chest rose and yanked the bit of cloth draped over Ville's hips away.  Then he moved and yanked the robe off the drunken man and shoved him where he was between Ville's legs.

 _~Oh god, he's not.... Mikko, don't let him… ~_   Sammy was moving into the clearing even as Theon's order to move came through his ear-piece.  Clearly Theon had seen the same things he just had and wasn't inclined to let things continue, not that it would have helped them tactically no matter what they did.

Mikko beat them, dropping from the sky with an eagle like scream to land straddling Ville's prone form.  His gun barked out an unmistakable order to back the hell off and several men dropped screaming and dying before the smarter ones started to take the hint.  The burned person was dropped as the men carrying them had their throats cut before they could flee and Sammy had the feeling whoever they were they wouldn't survive the night as they just laid there in an awkward heap where they'd fallen.

Of course by the time any of the coven began to react at all defensively the rest of the team was in range to deal with them in a rather permanent fashion.

Jason and Christian he could hear being their usual effective selves if the screaming from the outer circle was anything to go by and Sammy could feel Julian's wards snap up and lock, until Julian took them down no one was leaving the circle alive.

And if he fell, well, it would take the PSTaF guys a couple hours to disable them from the outside.  Longer if Christian and Jason couldn't help from inside.

But Sammy could see Julian was in no danger, the idiots were all trying to escape, and mostly getting flattened before they had gotten anywhere close to the wards.

Even better Julian had used that monster of a crossbow Christian favored when in his human shape to cut two of the ropes binding poor Ville, Mikko's claws had taken out another and his pistol and wings were a better defense than the rest of them had.

~0~

Ville was hyperventilating when the nut case who had been carving on him yanked the towel over his hips away.  He wanted to scream when they shoved a mountain of a man between his legs and the one who had carved on him reached between the other man's legs and casually working him to hardness.

He was babbling, begging them not to do what he knew they were going to do, what he wouldn't be able to stop them from doing.  He could feel the tears he'd managed to keep at bay when he'd been being cut up streaming out.  He struggled helplessly against the ropes holding his wrists and ankles, but like before they didn't budge.

Please not this, he didn't want to die like this.  He’d wanted his first to be Anssi, not some stranger who was clearly drugged to the gills.

An eagle screamed, and he felt something land over him and was sobbing, begging and praying when the screaming started.

Then abruptly his left arm was free, and then his legs and he rolled off the altar as whatever had landed over him leapt at the lunatic in charge.

Ville sobbed and curled in as small a ball as he could manage as he huddled into the side of the altar and waited for the screaming to stop.

After a moment he felt something wrapping around him, sheltering him and all Ville could do was shake and wait.  Something that had a really big gun and was more than happy to use it to protect him had him sheltered under a protective wing  So he huddled into that sheltering body and tried not to break down as he waited.

Waited for the screaming to stop.

~0~

Christian was grim faced as he came up on the altar where Sammy was hovering over Mikko and their survivor.

Theon and Vivian were coming up on the other side and Vivian looked just as grim as he took in the padding on the rough stone.

“They weren't going to kill him.”  It wasn't a question, just an observation from the slender vampire.

“No, Ville would have been transferred into the body of the burned man, at least at first.”  Mikko looked up from where he was sheltering Ville with his arms, body and wings, one wing claw gently stroking Ville’s hair.  “Soul transference spells like that one can only happen at Beltane.  I think when the purity marks came up they decided on a different binding.  The burned man didn't survive being dropped, so I suspect they were either going to just kill him or use his blood to strengthen the bindings.”

“Jesus,” Jason sounded disgusted.  “Sick fucks.  Mikko; let me look at him so I can make sure they didn't leave anything nasty in the paint they were using on his marks.”  Jason dropped carefully to his knees and set his smaller kit by his knee and waited.  Rushing this wouldn't help his poor patient. He'd already checked the burned kid and could confirm he'd cracked his skull wide open when he'd been dropped.  A waste, but nothing they could do about it.  At least it was a clean death.  Nothing like a power sacrifice could expect.

Mikko crooned softly to the trembling and weeping young man in his arms.  Then he gradually pulled his wings back as Julian came up with a soft and warm blanket, probably taken from the pile of supplies he'd seen while scouting earlier.

To their surprise Ville looked up and actually recognized them as Julian gently tucked the blanket around his thin shoulders.  That he hadn’t been drugged implied some things that made Jason uneasy.  The only reasons you left a sacrifice aware was if you wanted to bleed the last dribbles of power out of them as they felt the full horror of what was happening to them.

Well, unless it was a _willing_ sacrifice, but those felt completely different.  This place felt tainted right now, and would stay that way until someone purified it, either them or a PSTaF appointed group.

“Ju, Juho?  Jason?  What, what are you doing out here?” Then he sniffled and tried to wipe his nose with the one hand that they hadn't freed.

“Easy, easy Ville.  We're here to help.” said Jason softly as he carefully helped his mate wrap the blanket a bit more securely around Ville's shoulders.  From the shivering shock was starting to set in.  “Sammy?  Could I borrow your knife?”

Jason made sure he was looking right into Ville's eyes as Sammy handed over his smaller blade.  Not that a sixteen odd centimeter long blade was precisely _small_ , but the dagger was shorter, and significantly cleaner than the broadsword Sammy had in his other hand.

“Ville I'm going to cut the rope that's holding you so we can get you out of here.  Is that okay?”

Ville nodded shakily and followed it up with a stuttered yes.

The last binding rope was cut and the knife handed solemnly back to Sammy to put away.  Sammy just nodded and finished wiping down his sword to put it away as well.  Jason would wait a bit to cut away the last bits of rope around Ville's wrists and ankles, the PSTaF guys would want it for evidence, and Jason wanted both better light and very sharp scissors so he could prevent any more injury.  The bruising he could see and smell was bad enough that Jason didn't want to add to poor Ville's trauma by trying to cut them off in the crappy light of flickering torches with nothing but a knife.

Accidentally slitting a wrist after rescuing the poor man was an irony he'd rather avoid thanks.

“I don't smell anything dangerous in the paint, but Jules?  Make sure to grab the bowl just in case.”

Julian nodded and held up the plastic evidence bag that he'd just sealed around the bowl and the dregs of its contents.  They'd have it out of the plastic later tonight so Jason could run some tests on the contents, so the issue of mold or wet rot wouldn't be a concern.

Christian squinted off into the trees and grimaced at the lights he could see weaving and bobbing closer and closer.

“That's the PSTaF crew.”

“The, the what?” Ville asked shakily as Jason did a quick check over of his cuts.  Fortunately they all looked shallow; the nut case marking him had only just barely broken the skin for most of the marks.  That was good on the one hand, Ville wouldn't need many stitches if any at all, but it implied some things that set Jason's skin crawling.

“Paranormal task force.  They are the regular police for this kind of thing.  And they aren't horrendously late for once.” answered Mikko mildly as he tucked his wings away and brought his camouflage all the way up, his eyes flickering an eerie purple before settling back to their normal intense shade of blue

Julian muttered something rude and wrapped his hand around his pendant to bring the wards back down so the police could get in when they covered the last little distance.  The ward stones he'd used to set the wards would disintegrate into dust now that they'd been used.  They were a trifle more expensive power wise, but far safer when they couldn't be sure of retrieval after a fight.  Mikko was more than happy to help provide the power to make the temporaries as he was all for not leaving magical 'fingerprints' laying around where they could be used to hurt his team.

“I could have done with them being a bit later personally,” grumbled Vivian.  He wasn't sure if this crew had any sensitive’s with them; sensitive’s had a nasty habit of feeling the residual energies Mikko put out when he had his wings out, and a bad habit of asking questions that were damned hard to answer.  A few more minutes, or even the couple hours that they normally ran behind would have given them the chance to clear some of the residue in the name of purifying the area.

“Irrelevant right now,” said Theon flatly.  “Let's get Ville were we can get those cuts properly looked at, and tell his band mates he's okay.”

Ville let out a tiny sob, and then broke down completely just as the first members of the PSTaF task force came on scene.  He wanted Anssi, and Janne and for all of this to just go away.

He wanted Anssi, and he wanted to go _home_.

~0~

“So,” said Vivian as he settled down at the table that held the rest of his team and the debriefing officers from the local PSTaF unit.  “Who exactly did we end up rescuing Ville from?”  Ville was safe in a secure hospital bed, and their survivors were locked up and mostly singing like canaries.  The wounded, one and all, had ended up eerily dead, even those with only minimal wounds.  It had left Vivian with a nasty taste in his mouth.

Lieutenant Sasha Vujori grimaced and laid out copies of what his team had collected overnight.  From the thickness of the folders it looked like they'd been able to identify almost everyone captured or killed last night.

Vivian wasn't too broken up at the deaths, not from the way that circle had smelled, and he didn't have Jason's clever nose.  But the dead with only small wounds made him think there was a rather nasty fail safe in place, and he wanted to know what sick fuck had set it into motion.

“One Gunter Ivan Ivvorsson and his son Gustav, and a coven of troublemakers we'd been trying to prove weren't as innocent as they pretended to be.  Tvichka no last name known and his crew have been associated with a large number of paranormal, ah, oddities in the area.  He's been running a clinic offering eternal youth and rejuvenation for a price.”

“Tvichka, Tohvrichka, why is that name ringing danger bells in my head,” muttered Julian as he paced and read the file in his hands.

Christian had muttered something rude about devil's bargains and idiots being overly concerned with outer appearances.

Mikko let out a disgusted noise as he flipped to the file photographs of the men who had kidnapped Ville.  But he read so fast it made Vivian's head hurt.

“I think because he’s a Trovitch.” his disgusted tone made Vivian blink.  That would explain why the shedding of even tiny amounts of blood was a death sentence for their prisoners, sick bastard.

Sasha’s head snapped up in horrified recognition.

“Aren’t those the sorcerers who can soul swap with their own bloodline?”

“Vittu.” swore Jason, Christian’s reaction was a touch more savage, and had them watching as he vented in a rather epic style.  But Christian had a long standing personal beef with a Trovitch sorcerer, and was now unhappy that they had killed the current body of this one.

That they might be dealing with the blasted bastard who had carved up Ville and had been setting the poor man up to be brutally raped to death and chained to a demon in his afterlife made all of them uneasy.

He’d know his enemy, and they’d be fumbling in the dark.  Vivian shared a look with Theon, they'd be helping Christian and Mikko do some research tonight, to see if they couldn't narrow the odds a little.

He just wished it had been a female Trovitch, then they'd just be looking for daughters of the dead sorceress, not any random sons of the male.

Vivian really wished that the first action any male Trovitch made after possessing a new body wasn’t a month’s long rape spree to ensure there was another generation of potential hosts.

~0~

Anssi rubbed his thumb over the knuckles of Ville’s right hand.

Asleep he looked a bit like a fallen angel, his dreads being spread out over the white pillowcase didn’t really help that image.  The hospital sheet and blanket were pulled up over the bandages on Ville’s chest and the IV line in his left arm was just fluids for now.  Last night the poor man had needed a mild sedative to get any sleep as he'd kept waking up screaming from truly horrible sounding nightmares.

But he was alive.  He was back and safe and he was _alive_.  He just looked so small and frail lying in the hospital bed.  The bruises on his wrists and ankles were horrifically purple, but would heal; Anssi just wished he could take them away.

Anssi didn’t even twitch when a familiar hand rested on his shoulder.

  1. He’ll be okay.”



“He was just gone so long.”  Anssi looked up into Janne’s eyes, blue eyes as dark circled as he knew his own to be.  They both had to look like a pair of pandas, a pair of gaunt, insomniac pandas.  “If you hadn’t known Sammy could find him…”

“I did though, and Ville’s safe.”

“But how did you _know_ Sammy could help?” Anssi looked back down at the long fingered hand he was clinging to with both hands.  “The police couldn’t.”  He didn't say the police wouldn't help, but he was thinking it and knew Janne heard his unspoken thought.

He heard the sigh, and saw Janne settle on the other side of Ville’s hospital bed to gather up Ville’s other hand and reach out to ghost a light touch over that high forehead and over the soft wisps of lose hair around Ville's face.

“That’s a bit more complicated.  You remember the problems Mama had with Father?”

Anssi nodded, those problems had been a large part of the reason why Janne had been a regular face at the Nordberg dinner table.

Janne sighed again and stared down at Ville’s still face.

“Father was a Slayer.”

Anssi blinked.

“Like the movies?”  Suddenly a number of grumbles about overdone movie effects made a _lot_ more sense.

The snort was telling, as was the lopsided smile.

  1. “I came online after he died.”



Anssi went very still.  He read enough popular fiction and watched enough movies to think he knew what that meant.

“You’re a Slayer?”

Janne nodded.

Anssi stared down at Ville’s sleeping face and pondered that.  Clearly a lot of the fiction was bogus, all the movies and stories had a newly on-lined Slayer getting hunted by anything and everything as the nasties tried to take out the threat while it was still relatively helpless.

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Nothing was coming after me, so I figured it wasn’t a big deal.”

Anssi nodded, that at least made some sense.  It wasn’t like Janne was any different now anyway.

“But how did you know Sammy could help?  That he _would_ help?”  Being able to help and actually helping Anssi had learned were two very different animals.  The past few weeks had been a quick a brutal lesson in reality, and in what the differences in hangers on and real friends were.  At least they now knew that some of the folks they'd called friend really were, and could be wary of some of the others.

“Sammy’s a vampire.”

Anssi felt his head snap up and idly noted that Janne would need to shave his head soon, it was covered in super short blond fuzz.

“What?” The word came out weakly.  Vampires were supposed to be kind of the bad guys; he knew there were treaties in place, just like with lycan packs.  But lycan at least were just like normal people, they just could go fuzzy, vampires kind of scared him.

Janne sighed again and locked gazes.  Then he repeated slowly, “Sammy Black is a vampire.  More critically he’s a High Line and part of a Hunter team.  All of Lovex is part of it, and Sammy’s little bond mate.”

“The itty bitty blond thing?”  Not that Mikko was really _that_ small, he was Ville's size, but he was significantly smaller than Sammy was.  Small enough that Anssi's mind instantly went to very bad places and he had to yank his mind away from those dark thoughts telling himself that the Sammy Black he knew would never abuse another human being like that.  That Sammy would never abuse someone he _loved_ like that.

Janne nodded.

“The itty bitty little blond thing, who has a research library I’d sell my left nut for.  Who has a weapon collection that makes my Slayer side drool, yeah, that bond mate.”

“I’m thrilled to know you only love me for the sharp pointy things on my walls and the books on my shelves.”

Anssi jumped, and was somewhat relieved to see Janne startle as well as they both turned to the slender and somewhat short blond man in the doorway with his hands full of what looked like takeaway and coffee cups.

Janne offered a wan smile but he accepted the carrier for the cups.

“I figured by now you’d be needing real food.  And would be wanting an update on what was going on outside.”

Anssi blinked.

There were four cups, and three bags, but Ville was still asleep.

He looked up then felt a tug on his hand and was turning to drown in bottomless pale blue eyes that had been closed for far too long.

“How long have you been awake?” asked Janne as he hastily set the drinks carrier aside and helped Ville sit upright.

“Long enough to get really confused,” Ville leveled a long look at Janne, one that made the drummer wince.  “You should have told us.  Even if this has nothing to do with it.”

Janne winced again.

Mikko sorted out bags and handed them around.

“If it helps we’re sure your bloodlines had nothing to do with why Ville was grabbed Janne.  And Ville, we had to go with pretty mild stuff, to keep the nurses from snitching your non doctor approved lunch.”

  1. Anssi crinkled his nose at the distinctive smell of Ville’s favorite fish soup, but anything beat hospital food, and he smiled sweetly when Anssi offered him the spoon that escaped from the bag.
  2. Smoked Salmon and spicy mustard was a bit of a treat, not that he was going to complain, not after the last few weeks of feeling like he couldn’t eat at all.



Mikko settled on the foot on Ville’s bed and sipped at the cup Janne passed back to him after a bit of soft conversation about which drink was whose.

“We got all but one of the folks who grabbed you Ville, and the ones who survived are singing loud and long in the hopes of being protected.”

Ville swallowed hard then looked up.

“Why did they take _me_?”

Anssi swallowed hard and wished with all his heart that hadn’t been Ville’s first question.

“The leader of the group had been contacted by a man who was hoping to restore his son.  The boy, young man really, in question had been badly burned in an auto accident and he wanted his son healthy again.”

Anssi wished he didn’t understand that motivation, but Mikko wasn’t done.

“He picked you from a list of men who were of similar build to the son before he was injured and you were snatched for the ritual.  I think just because you were just the one they could get the quickest.  Rituals like these can really only take place once a year, and from what the medical examiner has said the son wasn't likely to last another year.  You may have noticed they were very careful to not hurt you if they could avoid it.  At least up until the ritual itself.  Things work best if the victim is as unmarked as possible.”

Ville nodded.

“When the ritual started the group’s leader learned something, something he didn’t expect given you are the singer for a very popular band and changed his mind about which ritual he would do.”

“From what to what?” asked Janne and Anssi swore in his own head.

“From a ritual of soul transference to…”

“He was going to take my Ville and give his body to someone else?!” Anssi blurted, and then he flushed and looked down at his half eaten sandwich.  “Sorry.”

Mikko smiled.

“That’s aright if I was in your boots I think I’d be having a royal fit right now.  But I was saying he changed his mind.  He decided on binding Ville for use in a later power ritual.  You really don’t want to know the exact one; it’s pretty horrible for the sacrifices.”

Ville grimaced, but for once didn’t contest that anyone knew what he wanted better than he did.  His nightmares must be enough to make him not want to think about anything _worse_ happening.  What _had_ happened was horrible enough.

“Why did he make the change?” asked Anssi softly.  There had to be a good reason, didn’t there?  He refused to think about the fact that Mikko had said _sacrifices_ , as in more than one.

From the pained wince on Mikko’s face there was a reason, one he was hesitating to just explain.

Ville leveled a glare at Mikko.

“Why.”

Mikko sighed and glanced at Anssi and Janne then shot a questioning look at Ville.  Anssi shared an amused glance with Janne, as if Mikko could tell them anything they didn't already know about Ville.  They'd only known each other all their lives.

Ville’s stare didn’t change.

“Why.” He repeated in a tone that Anssi knew meant trouble if Ville wasn’t made happy very soon. Ville might be the shortest of them and correspondingly slender, but he could pack a mean wallop if he was mad enough, something many a schoolyard bully had learned to their regret.

Mikko sighed and answered.  “It’s because of your status.  You being virgin makes a huge difference for several rather nasty power rituals.”

Janne snorted rudely.

“You _still_ haven’t gotten that fixed?”

Ville flushed and growled, “Fuck you Heikkonen.”

“Thanks, no.  I like girls.”

Ville sighed, and then looked back at Mikko.

“So how did he figure it out, it’s not like any of them actually bothered to _talk_ to me.”

“The marks on your chest.  The leader was also a channeler, and was using that skill to pick the best runes to use for the ritual. There are a lot of purity marks that came up.”

Ville swallowed hard and rested a hand on the bandages on his chest.  Anssi knew Ville could cope with he and Janne knowing he was still virgin at thirty, Janne had been ribbing him about it for years, but the whole world?  That was a bit much.  Ville already had girls trying to get in his pants; he didn't need any more of the crazy ones coming after him.  The crazy ones scared _him_ , and he and Janne both were bigger and stronger than Ville.  Not faster though, but running away from your fans wasn't the best way to keep them buying your records.

“And don’t worry, according to Jason those marks are shallow enough, and the paint they were using was antiseptic enough that you shouldn’t scar at all.”  The faint smile went a touch wry.  “So no awkward explanations for the fan girls.”

Anssi winced.

That at least was good to know.

~0~

Ville twitched a little when Jason came to see him.  He’s been warned that a lycan healer was coming to see him to go over the marks on his chest.  Bad enough in itself, older lycan tended to be insular to the point of madness from his perspective and the one healer he’d ever met had been, well, crotchety was putting it mildly.

He wasn’t looking forward to the meeting.  He wasn't even sure _why_ a lycan healer was even needed.  He wasn't lycan.

Then the nurse had given him a stern lecture and a long set of instruction for how to deal with a lycan, as if he hadn’t had a classmate who had been one.  But Timo had been just one person, and been outgoing as all hell.  He really had no idea if Timo was a good example of the more modern lycan or not.

So he’d been all set and expecting to be the inadvertent cause of an interspecies incident when Jason walked in.

“Hei.”

“Uh, Hei Jason.  Um, what are you doing here?  I’m due to get tortured by a lycan specialist today.”

Jason began snickering, which made Ville indignant.  Ville's annoyance only made Jason laugh harder and in turn fuelled Ville’s indignation.  It quickly spiraled out of control until Ville was bouncing in frustration on his bed and Jason was laughing so hard his eyes were streaming and he had to sit down.

Anssi poked his head in and the perplexed look on his face had Ville snarling in frustration and wanting something more substantial than his pillow to throw.  _That_ got Anssi fully into the room and over at Ville’s bedside to try and soothe the aggravated man.

Jason wiped his eyes with a sleeve.

“It’s aright Anssi, Ville just clearly didn’t get told _who_ his healer was going to be and got the list of ‘thou shalt not’s’ shoved up his nose.”

Ville stopped grumbling and stared blankly at Jason.  Anssi wasn’t much better and Ville stomped on the urge to giggle as his friend gawped like an idiot.

“Since when are you a healer?” asked Ville shortly.

“I was gonna ask since when is he lycan,” muttered Anssi after snapping his lax jaw shut.

Jason’s crooked smile made Ville groan.

“I was born one silly, and have been in training since I was about nine.  Fully fledged as an independent healer for about five years now.”  Jason shrugged and set down a little black bag that forcibly reminded Ville of an old fashioned doctor’s satchel.  “Given how accident prone my band is it's useful.”  There were undertones there that made Ville shiver.  If he was part of a Hunter team some of those 'accidents' were probably anything but.

Jason didn’t pull out a stethoscope or anything like that, just a couple rolls of wide bandage, some tape and a small pot of something.  Then Jason did something that none of the nurses ever bothered to do.

He told Ville what he needed to do before he did it.

More importantly he gave him the chance to say no, not that Ville was _going_ to, but it was still nice to be offered the option.

“I’m going to pull the old bandages off, so I can see how the marks are healing, and it may hurt a bit.”

Ville swallowed hard and nodded and Jason moved to begin.  Jason worked quickly, but his hands were surprisingly gentle.  Ville winced once where the bandage stuck to one of the deeper marks but otherwise he was surprised at how painless the removal of the old dressing was.  The nurses always seemed to be in a rush and as a result removing the bandages always hurt.

Jason frowned at the mess on his chest and got up and ran a bowl of water, talking as he did so.

“I'll need to do a bit of clean up, it looks like the nurses are just slathering you with antibiotic salve and not really washing the old away first.”  The undertones to his voice were faintly disapproving, and Ville shared a startled look with Anssi.

Then Ville blinked when he realized Anssi was holding his hand, holding on and gently stroking a thumb over his knuckles.

Anssi caught him staring and flushed a little, but he didn't let go, and that made Ville smile as Jason came back with a basin of lightly steaming water a towel and a cloth.

“This may hurt a little, but I need to get all the crud off so I can really see what's going on.”

Ville managed a small smile for Jason and braced for things to really hurt.  This was _much_ better than being told to hold still and huffed at if he yelped.

Cleaning the cuts didn't hurt though.

Warm water helped a lot, the last good scrub he'd had had been with what felt like ice water and a pot scrubber, and Jason's hands were shockingly gentle as they used the soft cloth to wipe away the ucky stuff coating his chest.

It also helped that he explained what some of the marks meant, and why they were important.

Then he was coating the marks in something that smelled rather good, even if it was a creepy shade of green, from the pot he'd pulled out of his bag and recovering everything with neat wraps of what felt like very fine linen rather than the coarse gauze that had been making him itch like crazy.  A few bits of tape secured the loose ends of the linen and Ville was quietly grateful Jason didn't stick the horrid stuff to his skin like the last nurse had done.  The tape pulled and itched worse than the gauze did and it hurt like blazes being pulled off.  Then Jason checked his bruises, made a tisking noise and dosed and carefully wrapped them as well.

The green goop eased the ache in his wrists and ankles, and Jason seemed to know what was going on, so he asked the question that had been nagging him for the last few days.

“Why weren't the police concerned when I vanished?”

Jason winced and sighed, but he did settle back in the other chair after wiping the excess salve off his fingers and repacking the extra bits back into the bag.

“Mostly because it was just you that vanished, and there was no ransom or threat note to Janne.  They didn't consider it a high priority as you aren't listed as a potential.  Hazards of the 'adults can go missing if they want' rules the police have to go by.”

“Potential?”

“Potential vampire,” Jason clarified.  “If Anssi had vanished as well there would have been a major stir.  No one wants the mess of an involuntary conversion now.”

“Why?” Anssi beat Ville to asking that question.

Jason's level stare made Anssi gulp.  He'd never realized that Jason rarely looked people right in the eye, and now that Jason was staring right into his, he understood why.  He was staring an apex predator right in the face; that the face belonged to a friend made it all the more disturbing.

“You _are_ a potential Anssi.  And that lot of idiots would have been prime candidates to try binding a vampire by the Brugerian rite.”

“What's that?” asked Ville when Anssi voice failed him.  But he supposed getting told you could become a monster was a bit of a shocker.

Jason winced, but he stood and closed the door of the room, tracing a pattern on it and muttering under his breath.  When his fingers traced back to their starting point little arrows of color shot around the room then faded away.

Ville felt his eyes go round when he could see a tracing of blue-green light following Jason's fingers.  A glance at Anssi and he saw a shocked face, so he knew Anssi could see those faint traceries as well.

Then Jason came and sat back down.

“The Brugerian rites are a means of force turning a potential without the focused intent and sacrifice it takes a vampire to convert a human to a vampire.  It converts the first victim into a vampire and then binds them by the sacrificial murder of someone close to the person that's being converted.  Normally the covens trying to bind the vampire try and grab family, very close friends or lovers as the sacrifice as it releases more power and makes the binding more sure.  They want to be very sure their pet vampire is safe, as most are anything but happy with their new situation.”

Ville swallowed hard and was grateful for Anssi's hand holding his own.  There were implications behind Jason's words that scared the crap out of him.  It sounded rather like using a murder to force someone into slavery.

“You're saying if they grabbed both of us, they'd have tried converting me and murdered Ville.”

“You would have converted, after that it's anyone's guess.  The last few attempts at the Rite I've seen have been, ah, shall we say, _spectacular_ failures?”  The level of black humor in Jason's tone made Ville swallow hard before asking his next question.

“The vampires didn't convert?” asked Ville.

Jason's smile was strangely ironic.

“Oh no, the vampire has converted in all three cases.  Just in two cases the intended sacrifice was the vampire’s bond mate or compatible enough to serve and the people trying to enact the Rite ended up dead at the hands of the vampire they were trying to bind.”

“I don't understand.”  Ville knew he was crushing Anssi's hand, but he couldn't bring himself to let go.

Jason sighed and dug out his phone, sent what looked like a series of texts and waited.

He got at least one response right off and grimaced.  Then he looked up again.

“Vivian and Sammy were both victim's of the Rites.  Theon was the chosen sacrifice for Viv, I was the sacrifice for Sammy.  The other I can't talk about without their permission.”

Ville felt the blood draining from his face and shared a horrified look with Anssi.  But Jason wasn't done.

“Vivian didn't wake in the expected three days, he took six.  When he dug himself out of the pit they'd buried him in he was already feral with blood need and went after the main participant.  I _refuse_ to call what they do a celebration.  Most late risers are really weak and slow, so they didn't expect him to be as fast and as strong as he was, not that any of _us_ was at all broken up about it.  We found them after Vivian had already rescued himself and completed the bond with Theon.  Sammy went the other way and woke up after only a day or so, so they were _utterly_ unprepared for him.  Early risers are so rare no one ever prepares for them; and Sammy's at the extreme end for them. That and the rest of the guys had Mikko to help them find us, but Sammy was part way through rescuing us when they got on scene. Mikko shot the main participant when she tried to salvage the Rite and we ran like hell.  Sammy finished the bond later that morning once we were safe.”  Jason grimaced.  “Then the next week he scared the crap out of all of us by going after coffee in daylight.”

Ville shook his head in confusion; he'd seen Vivian and Sammy both out in full sunlight.  Vivian didn't seem to care for it, but that could have just been a commentary on the fact that he was often up until three or four in the morning and being up before noon was challenging.  Ville had days where getting up before two in the afternoon was challenging.  It was a hazard of their profession.

“But both of them are out in the daytime, why is that something that would scare you?”

Jason's smile was a bit more genuine this time.

“Vivi can take a potion to help keep him from burning; most vampires _can't_ cope with sunlight, or can only cope after they are a century or more old.  Sammy, well Sammy could cope right off.  It's very rare and we're half expecting the Royal council to make him one of their number by the time he's fifty.  Royals can deal with sunlight, and tend to be the liaison's to the normal human world.”

Ville let out a tiny 'oh' sound and shivered.  Anssi moved to sit on the bed beside him and wrapped his arms around him.  Ville was rattled enough to not even try a token protest as he rested his head on Anssi's shoulder, it felt too good to be held.

~0~

Janne sighed and looked down at the bed where Anssi and Ville were curled up asleep.

Well, Ville was curled in his usual loose ball now that he wasn't tethered down by an IV line.  Anssi was half curled, spooned behind Ville with one arm thrown protectively over the slighter singer.  Maybe now the pair would figure it out and get around to fixing Ville's little virginity problem.

At least then he'd have a reason for the ear plugs he kept in his drawer.

“You really think it's possible that this lunatic sorcerer could come after them again?” he asked the small person behind him.

“Yes, we called a friend to do a reading and Linke confirms there is still danger looming over both of them.  Over all three of you really, but more intensely over them.”  There was no hesitation or doubt in Mikko's voice.

“I hate this.”

“Janne, you love them like brothers.  If you _didn't_ hate the situation I'd be checking to see if you were human.  Even demons love their families.”

Janne snorted rudely, but ignored the bit about demons, he wasn't sure he wanted to know how Mikko knew some of the things he did.

“Mikko, I'm a Slayer, you know we don't count as exactly human anymore.”

The grimace was telling, but Mikko knew a lot more Slayers, and a lot more _about_ Slayers, than Janne had expected for someone who wasn't a Slayer himself.

“By that logic Prophets and Summoners aren't exactly human either, but at the bottom they still fundamentally are.”

“You know a Prophet?”  Janne was distracted; he'd never met one of the near mythical humans with charisma enough for ten and a power pool that made Guardian's hesitate.

The smile he got was odd; the 'I know something you don't know' look as he'd started calling it.

“I know a few.”  Then Mikko sobered.  “I still think you should be armed, just in case.”

Janne made a rude noise.

“Father didn't have a sword.”  The old man hadn’t, he’d used a crossbow until the day he died.  Janne had also noticed that even Sammy carried a handgun when going out Hunting nasties in addition to the crazy big broadsword and dagger.

Mikko didn't even blink.

“That doesn't mean you shouldn't.”

“You aren't going to let this go are you,” it wasn't really a question.  Mikko could be as bad as Ville when he was after something.

“No.”

At least Mikko wouldn't pull the pleading Malja blue eyes of doom.

Janne grimaced at the steady almost steely blue eyed stare he was getting.

He thought right now the begging eyes of his singer might be easier to deal with.

But, much as he a hated to admit it, Mikko was right.

Things were coming, he needed to be ready.

~0~

“Oh, you have _got_ to be **_kidding_** me.”

Jonne barely stifled his giggles. Janne Heikkonen was not coping well with the idea that his new trainer cum sparring partner was Sir Christus.

Kris at least was coping pretty well with having a student, and had reacted to Janne's incredulous exclamation with a flutter of eyelashes and blown kiss.

Kris took his job as Seppo's other father and protector _very_ seriously, and he'd gotten the attention of Jason and Christian's birth packs by acting as rear guard when he, Jonne, and little Seppo had gotten a very nasty wake-up call while camping.

A large pack of warg was nothing to trifle with.  But his actions had ensured that Jonne and Seppo had made it out without a scratch.  Seppo hadn't even had nightmares.  Jonne wished he'd been as lucky.

The packs Wardens were more than happy to help him train and practice his blade work.

Going up against a lycan in hybrid form was no laughing matter.  The smallest of the Wardens outweighed Kris by at least his own weigh in hybrid form and had longer limbs and excellent reflexes.  Habitually going up against opponents who were bigger, faster and stronger than he was made Kris get _very_ good, very fast.  Even getting to the point where he was fighting his partners to a draw routinely left him coming home with welts, scratches and bruises.

It also had him coming home horny as hell.

Not that Jonne was complaining.  Well, other than having to explain a few things to his son a lot sooner than he'd planned on.  It helped that Kris had helped; he'd blushed darker than Jonne could recall ever seeing him blush, but he had helped explain things.  Thank goodness Seppo was a level headed little thing, Jonne blinked back tears.

Seppo was a lot like his mother had been in that regard.

But Seppo was still a little boy in that he was crowing at the chance to watch his Papa Kris fighting with swords.

That was probably part of why Janne was leery of the whole exercise.  Getting your butt whomped in front of a four year old could be devastating to your ego.  He'd already snarked about knowing to 'stick 'em with the pointy end' and made Seppo giggle.

That Kris was in teeny tiny shorts and a hot pink tank top probably didn't help.  His pendant looked awfully girly if you didn't know what that amber colored drop signified.  Janne hadn't commented, but he had rolled his eyes when he'd seen Jonne and Kris both wearing them.  He probably thought they were just some cutsy lovers thing.  Jonne would have to enlighten him.

Later though.

“I see he's going for the maximum 'I'm cute, silly and harmless' effect today.”

Jonne barely stifled his giggles. But Talla had a way with tones, her words could be blandly innocent and her tone of voice would have Jonne giggling like a lunatic. He wondered if it was a side effect of being mated to a Shaman for over thirty years.

Janne huffed and picked up his practice blades, weighted wooden copies of the blades he'd been given by Mikko and faced off against Kris.

Kris just grinned and bounced into place.

“Ready?” he chirped.

“Yeah, whatev.. **_FUCK_**!”

Jonne clamped a hand over his mouth as Janne began frantically back-pedaling while blocking as best he could.  He'd lost the shorter dagger right off and was clumsily fending off blows with an awkward two handed grip on longer blade that was intended to be held in one hand.

Kris had just bounded right in and was cheerfully pushing his blows right through Janne's blocks.  A hazard of him practicing against bigger and stronger opponents was that he hit _hard_ , sometimes far harder than he really needed to against regular human opponents  Yu never complained, he considered it extra incentive to _not_ get hit in the first place.

“Ah! _Sonova **bitch**_!”

Kris had slapped the flat of his shorter blade into the inside of Janne's right wrist and flicked it back to catch his left as well.  The blade promptly dropped out of numbed fingers.

“That will leave a mark.” was Talla's mild observation.

“Papa Kris didn't hurt Mr. Janne did he?' asked Seppo very clearly, his high, piping voice carrying down to both men in the practice ring.

Janne's ears and cheeks flushed.

Kris's face was sober in stark contrast to the frustration on Janne's and his own earlier levity.

“Are you ready to take this seriously?”

Janne shot a look up at where Jonne, Talla and Seppo were watching and grimaced when he saw all the others watching in interest.

“Yeah.  What _the hell_ did you just do?” he asked as he carefully flexed his hands to get feeling back.

Kris grimaced.

“Passed on a lesson Yu taught me my first bought.  _Never_ underestimate your enemy.  He had me flat on my back screaming like a girl in three steps.”

Jonne watched as Janne picked up his practice blades again and this time listened to Kris.

Something to be said for Slayer's, they tended to get the point quickly.  They might not _like_ their teachers much, but they could and would learn from anyone if it meant upping their survival chances.

~0~

Mikko frowned down at the circle of ashes and the butchered body that lay inside it.  Beside him Ash and Jinxx were on their knees looking at something more closely.

Ash stood with a grimace and dusted his hands off on his jeans.

“Lovely little un-friend you've got here.”

“The ritual didn't work.”  Mikko reminded flatly.

“Good thing,” said Jinxx and he rose as well.  “If it had we'd have a stupidly overpowered sorcerer running around with delusions of grandeur.”

“Regular ones with delusions aren’t much fun either,” reminded Mikko grimly as he stepped back to let the PSTaF cleanup crew get back to work.

“True,” agreed Ash ruefully.  “At least now the cleanup crew can work without getting blasted by residual demon nasties.”

The grimace that twisted one of the techs features reminded them all that two techs were in the hospital because of 'demon nasty' backlash.  Both were expected to fully recover, but their accident had prompted an emergency call in of the two closest Hunter teams.

Mikko had been profoundly grateful that the other team called was the Brides, otherwise they'd have needed to wait for an empowered priest to be able to disburse the demon tainted aura of the crime scene.  He could do it alone, but to do so would require him to shed his camouflage.

Not a safe thing to do when you had three teams of jumpy PSTAF folks around you.

“How do you know the ritual didn't work,” came the short not quite question from one of the officers on scene.  The young man had already set Mikko on edge and he could tell he'd irritated Jinxx by demanding to know what 'some furball' could do that his team couldn't.  The lycan on the crew had already growled that a Mystic wasn’t ‘some furball’, but been ignored.

Mikko took a deep breath and reminded himself that murdering allies was never a good idea.

“One, we still have the victim's body.  In this sort of power ritual the body of the intended sacrifice always vanishes if it completes successfully.  Two, the nature of the injuries the two technicians received when they attempted to dispel the wards so they could begin properly processing the scene.  Third, I could smell it.”

Jinxx looked up in shock; he was used to being one of the few lycan who could smell the subtle differences in ritual residue.

“Really?” he asked in surprise as the officer who was being the pain in the rear made a rude noise and demanded to know what smell had to do with anything.

The working techs in earshot stifled snickers.  Which told Mikko this kid was seen as a kid by his colleagues, and clearly they felt he was being an ass. 

Well, he'd learn or something would eat him.

He'd at least try and see if he could learn.

“A completed ritual like this leaves a very distinctive stench behind it; one that even a low level sensitive can smell.”

That got him a narrow eyed glare.

“And how do you know what that smells like, been to a lot of these?”  The undertones and implications had Ash bristling and Jinxx growling under his breath as Mikko stiffened and turned to fully face the obnoxious little brat.

“I've been part of Hunter teams for over twenty years.  I'm also a certified Demonologist who has been consulting for at least as long.  In simple terms it's _my **job**_ to know these things.”  He’d been part of Hunter teams for over a hundred years, but saying that would lead to tedious explanations about why he looked to be in his mid thirties at the oldest.

The sneer made several people gasp as the officer reached for his cuffs and Mikko's wrist at the same time.

“Then I think we need to take _your_ demon loving ass down to the station for questioning.”

Ash was moving, but then stopped as another voice cracked out over the scene in very clear annoyance.

“Perkins, what the hell are you doing harassing one of our experts?”  Captain Hinojosa snapped out as he stormed over.

“Taking his demon summoning ass in for questioning.  He admitted it!  He's probably in on this!”  The now named Perkins was still yanking futilely on Mikko's wrist trying to get his arm away from his side so he could handcuff him.

Mikko looked completely relaxed, but his arm wasn't budging even when the much taller man yanked on it.

“Jesus, **Hamilton**!  Come get your partner, and take his ass back to the station.” ordered Captain Hinojosa.

The man’s partner trotted up with a studiously blank look on his face.

“Sit him down and make sure this idiot actually **_reads_** the handbook and the definitions for our Hunter consultants and outside experts.”

“But,” protested Perkins.  “He admitted it.”

Mikko's tone was ice cold.

“I admitted to something that any _idiot_ with a pair of working eyes could see.  It's on my business card after all.  And anyone with a smart phone with any kind of a data plan could _look it up_ and both confirm it and see what a Demonologist actually _does_.”

The young officer took a breath to start ranting again but Mikko continued, leaving Jinxx and Ash to exchange wary looks as the power level around them grew.

“Further, if you continue with your idiocy about Demonologist's being murdering demon summoners you _will_ get a visit from my lawyer, and when she's through with you, you will wish you could take the place of that poor girl in the circle.”  Mikko's eyes flashed in a way that had Ash taking a surreptitious step back.  “Do you understand me Officer Jacob Perkins?”

“How did you know my name?” blurted the man as all color drained from his face.

“I know how _to **read**_ a roster.”

Mikko turned sharply and walked away to speak to one of the techs across the circle from them, and the prickle of unused power abruptly vanished.

  1. “Shit, Hamilton, get the idiot back to the station.”   Captain Hinojosa ordered again more softly as he went after the irritated man.



Hamilton swallowed hard and nodded.  Then he grabbed his partner's elbow and all but dragged him away hissing urgently in his ear.

Ash shared a look with Jinxx, who nodded back.

Now they remembered why it was a bad idea to piss Mikko off.

He was a scary little fucker.

~0~

Linke looked up at Sammy blankly.

“Yes, I know him.  He's a blithering idiot who should never have been given a badge, never mind assigned to PSTaF.”  He paused to gather his thoughts.  “Is there a _particular_ reason you're asking?  Or did he do something stupid.”

“Again,” added Jan in a deadpan voice as he handed Linke a travel cup filled with tea and settled down with his own coke.

“Yes, again.” sighed Linke with a wince.

“He's trying to get Mikko's credentials pulled for work over here.”  Sammy took a sip of his coke and watched as they processed that information.  “And he tried giving restricted Hunter information to a yellow journalist.”

Linke felt his blood go cold.  That was one the worst fears of many Hunters who had families.  That some idiot would publish their information.  That alone was the number one reason why the secrecy spells protecting live Hunter teams were so stringently set.  The worst fear was that someone they loved would be snatched by something they were hunting and be injured or killed.

“Tried?” questioned Jan weakly.

“Tried,” confirmed Julian as his eyes tracked his mates as they moved up the line to place their food orders.  “The spells held, but my wards alarmed as did the ones on the warehouse.

“That little fucking idiot... Why?”

“Mikko's Demonology certs.” deadpanned Sammy.

Jan let out a very rude noise and Linke was hard pressed to not slap his palm into his face.

“I knew that Perkins was a xenophobic twit.  I didn't realize he was homicidally so,” observed Juri as he settled down at the table.

“Apparently he's decided to branch out.” was all Julian said in a far too bland tone.

“Poor Hammy's got to be about shitting himself.” Linke mused as he shook his head to settle his whirling thoughts.

“Hammy?” asked Julian as Sammy shot him a questioning look.

“Jacoby Hamilton, he's been partnered to the little twit and trying to turn him into a decent officer.” answered Juri.  “Mostly he's been spinning his wheels 'cause the stupid kid won't cooperate.”  Juri shook his head sadly.  “Some folks just shouldn't be allowed to work paranormal cases.”

“I'd amend that to some folks shouldn't be allowed to breed,” came a droll voice.

They all turned to see Andy standing there in his 'going to court' suit

“Andy!” Jan bounced up to give the tall singer a hug.  Juri smiled and reached a long arm over to snag a nearby empty chair for the man to sit in and everyone shifted a bit to make room.

Linke paused and looked more carefully into Andy's eyes.

“You were helping interview the family today weren't you?”

“Yes.”  Andy's short answer alerted all of them that something was up.  But then Christian and Jason were back with food and were greeting him warmly.

Once they settled back down, Andy looked at Julian and traced a pattern on the table.  To an outsider it looked like random nerves, to them it was a very clear request to ward their table.

Julian's eyes widened marginally, but he offered to continue their chess game, just in case anyone was listening.

Andy's smile was brittle to them, but no one who didn't know him well would ever realize it wasn't a genuine smile.

Julian had a small portable board out and was setting it up to look like a game in progress, the board itself carried a high power silencing and distracting ward in it, it only took a thought for Julian to activate it as he settled back and said the final activation words.

“I think it was your move.”

Now even lip readers wouldn't be able to focus long enough to get a good feel for their conversation.  A telepath would get flooded by the background static of all the other minds around them, but unless they were extraordinarily good would never realize they'd been blocked.

“What happened?”  Sammy was clearly worried.

“Bible thumpers, the worst kind of religious nut bags.  Daddy dearest refused to believe his baby girl was anything but virgin, and went on a good long rant about how good women didn't do _that_ before they had a wedded husband.”

“Great.  So no way to know if she had a boyfriend.” grumbled Christian.

“Nope, according to Daddy she wouldn't have given any boy outside their church the time of day, which I don't believe.  Jinxx and Ash are still talking to her friends.  But I don't think they'd know anything helpful.  I couldn't talk to Mom, she wouldn't speak and I'm getting the feeling if she knew anything she still might not tell if it contradicted what her husband thought.”

Linke swore.  He hated dealing with the types who believed women and children were property and a wife was good for nothing but having children on and then rearing those children.

“Andy chance he's part of things?” asked Jan, sounding like he was hoping, praying, the answer was no, but was afraid it would be yes.

  1. The poor kid’s house only showed magic in her room, and that was all the sort of thing you'd see in a kid who was empowered but utterly untrained.”



Jan winced.

“Perfect sacrificial victim then.  Other than not being virgin.” said Sammy sadly.  “Mikko thinks it was the classic demon's wife type ritual for power.”

“Mikko's generally right about things like that.  Wish he wasn't.” offered Linke softly.

“Yeah,” said Jason just as softly.  “Us too.”

~0~

Mikko walked out of the office doing his level best to not swear savagely.  Two steps behind him Captain Hinojosa was just as livid.  But his hands were just as tied.

Once they'd reached the common offices of the Los Angeles PSTaF Mikko stopped.

The officers gathered around their Captain all clamoring for word on what the results of the meeting were.

“Shush,” Captain Hinojosa, “I can't tell you jack shit unless you all shut it.”

That got instant silence as the man rarely swore without a very good reason.

“Commissioner Harlston just fucked our chances of solving this case.”

There was a rustle of worry as more of the department huddled closer, but Captain Hinojosa continued right over the murmurs.

“We are no longer allowed, or authorized in any way, to utilize resources outside the police force and traditional witnesses.  That means no Seer warning can be listened to, no mediums communications can be used and no Hunter teams can be permitted to assist in any way.”

“You are kidding me,” breathed one of the techs as several other techs and officers swore.

“Unfortunately he's not.  And that put me in a very bad position.” said Mikko.

Hamilton shot Mikko a wary look.

“Okay, Mik?  I'm gonna hate asking, but why?”

Mikko grimaced then planted his feet in a way that had everyone watching him warily.

“Your Commissioner Jack Edward Harlston has ordered that no Hunter team may assist, by doing so he's ordered me to state that no Hunter team or Magical person bound by the Edits and the Laws may, assist, impede or otherwise interfere with _any_ Los Angeles investigation until we are specifically asked to do so under the name of the Paranormal Services and Tracking Office.”

The flare of sickly blue power shot out in a rolling wave and all of them felt it as it rolled through them and out into the city.

“Oh that son of a bitch.  That arrogant, short sighted toadying son of a bitch!”  Marie Hinojosa swore, which made everyone stop and stare at the tiny Hispanic woman.  Their Captain's wife was normally a leveling force in the department.

“So, we don't have the freaks getting in the way now,” said Perkins snidely from hi sspot near the back of the room.

Mikko laughed and it was a brittle bitter sound.

“You really are a complete and utter idiot aren't you.”

The room went deathly still.

“I'm not an idiot you little freak,”

Mikko didn't even twitch when the young offer stomped up to get right in his face.

“Oh you are.  Your Commissioner has just ensured that no Hunter can help any of you.  If I saw you being gunned down in the street I couldn't lift a finger to help you.”

The stillness turned to silent horror as they began replaying the words back in their minds, but Mikko wasn't done.

“I couldn't even tell another officer what I saw even if they asked me.  Not _would not_ Perkins, **_could not_**.  By the words that man dictated to me I could not say or do _anything_ to help you.  The only magical people who can help you are Guardians, and they still _have to be asked_ for help.”  Mikko shook his head.  “God help you all, you're going to need it.  Hammy?” he asked in a voice that was trembling with a mix of unshed tears and rage, “would you escort me out please.  I'm not allowed to be here anymore.”

Hamilton swallowed hard and it took a couple attempts before he could get his voice to work.

“S, sure thing Mik.” He took Mikko's elbow and half led him out of the room.

Behind them chaos erupted.

~0~

CC stared in a mix of shock and horror as Jake spluttered in shock.

“What do you mean we can't help?”

“Larry's big boss just fucked the whole city over.” said Linke in an acidic tone as he kept an eye on where Mikko was weeping in Sammy's arms.

“Okay.  How?”

Sammy answered, his hands never stopping their gentle strokes over his mate's hair and back.

“He required Mikko to set an Oath Binding on all Magical beings in his range to not assist, impede or interfere.  The only ones who are free are the ones _not_ bound by the Edicts or the Laws.”

Jake abruptly sat down beside CC as the full import of that sank in.

“Holy fuck.”

“The only folks who aren't bound... ohhhh. Oh **_FUCK_**!” Andy exploded to his feet again.  “What in fucking hell was that stupid fucking asshole thinking?  He's just cut off _three quarters_ of the people who **_live_** here.  Made it where if they see a family member killed they can't say a _god **dammed**_ thing!”

“And the only people not bound by the Edicts or the Laws,” Jinxx grimaced.  “Not the sort of folks I'd want to take help from... moon and stars, that **_idiot_**!

Sammi looked up with worried eyes.

“I'll move back to the Enclave seat,” she said. “It should be out of range and safe.”

“Tell Sandra, so Jael can get their boys to a safe place too.” said Jinxx as he hugged his wife.  He kissed her then reluctantly let her go so she could start the process of getting their boys out of school and their household packed up and moved.

Ash had walked out when Andy erupted and came back in to wrap both arms tightly around his mate.

“I just got off the phone with Jon.  He felt the oath and has already started the ball rolling to get us out of country as soon as he can.”

CC whimpered and wondered what would happen to all the people who couldn't afford to get out of the reach of the binding.

~0~

Jacoby 'Hammy' Hamilton closed his eyes and profoundly wished he could afford to take a year’s vacation.

  1. The last one was found only a few hundred yards from the place where he'd been snatched away from a class field trip.



The mother of the vast victim had managed to get out around her tears and rage that it was because the Commissioner had, in her words, chained an angel to bind all good men so that evil could walk freely.

That was disturbing, that so _many_ people had been caught in the Commissioner's little power game.

People couldn't even report loved one's missing.

Parents couldn't report their **_children_** missing.

Three of the latest batch of kids that had gone missing had been reported as missing by _teachers_ with no magical gifts whatsoever, all three at the tearful behest of the parents.  Of those three two had been found, one had been at a friend’s house, the other at a tutoring session the parents hadn’t remembered.

The last one had been found in a circle of ashes.

And that was of the kids they _knew_ were missing.  Two of the drowned ones hadn't been reported missing, one they couldn't find any family for.

People, people with children of their own mostly, were screaming for the Commissioner's head on a plate and the man was refusing to budge.

People were _dying_ for his pride.

Worse all of the Hunter teams had flat out left the area.  As many magical people as could afford to had also pulled up stakes and left.  Bunco was left only with the untalented hucksters as every Bruho and Bruhera and all the gypsies had vanished literally overnight.

Even Vice had noticed a stark shift in what was coming in their doors.  Overdoses were now on magic _blocking_ drugs.  Anything that would dampen a person’s power levels was suddenly all but impossible to get.

And that _scared_ him.

What had the magical people so scared that they'd rather risk death or permanent damage to their powers just to not be noticed?

He reached his car and felt a sick chill of premonition.

His partner was nowhere to be seen.

And his phone was lying in pieces on the sidewalk in the swing of the car's open passenger door.

~0~

Ville purred softly as Anssi worked on the sore spots on his shoulders, the silly thing was so much of a cat it wasn't even funny.

“You shouldn't let Meet 'n' Greets get to you so much,” he chided gently.

“How can I not?  This last set, the girls, ghaa.” Ville shuddered artistically.

Anssi chuckled and leaned back so Ville could get up again.

“It's your own fault for answering truthfully when they ask if you are seeing anyone.”

Ville grimaced and muttered under his breath, “I don't _want_ to see anyone else.”

Anssi cocked his head; he hadn't just heard that had he?

“Ville?”

Ville realized he'd spoken aloud and looked up with wide panic stricken blue eyes.

“Uh...”

Anssi caught Ville's shoulder before he could bolt.

“Ville?” he asked again, more gently, then he let out a startled little noise as Ville grabbed for his ears and kissed him.

If he hadn't had his arms go around Ville and hang on tight the little singer would have let go and bolted.  But as it was he was stuck, so Anssi held on tight with one hand and tangled the other hand in Ville's still sweat damp dreads.

It was what first kisses were supposed to be; awkward as hell with teeth clicking off each other and noses getting in the way, but it got his blood hammering in his ears in the best possible way.

A soft cough dragged Anssi attention back to reality and off the squirmy armful he'd backed into the wall.  He couldn't remember Ville jumping up into his arms and wrapping those long runner legs around his waist.  He didn't remember crushing Ville into the wall and cupping that pert little ass in both hands or grinding into his clearly interested cock.

Janne was watching them both with amused blue eyes and was pointedly leaning back into the closed door of their dressing room.

He remembered that door being open when he'd started working on Ville's shoulders.

“Delighted as I am that you've pulled each other’s heads out of your asses, we _do_ have work to do still tonight.”  The grin was wicked, but happy.

“ _Fuck_ you Heikkonen!”

Anssi rather agreed, but had to smile when Janne laughed at them as he reached back and opened the door again.

“Still like girls Malja.” he teased as he walked back out, closing the door firmly behind him.

Ville glared blackly at the closed door, but looked up at him as soon as he cupped one cheek.

“We'll short sheet his bunk later,” he promised and leaned in for another, more chaste kiss.

Then they both scrambled to get ready and chased after their drummer.

~0~

“Home sweet home,” said Sammy as he dropped his bag and set his guitar down more carefully.  Then he blinked in confusion.

Mikko was normally here to greet him.

_~Kulta?~_

He could feel his mate in the apartment, but there was an intense buzz that didn't bode well.  Mikko only concentrated this hard when something was wrong.

_~In the library, love you. ~_

Sammy closed and locked the door behind him and kicked off his boots before all but running up the stairs to Mikko's library.

“Trouble?”

Mikko was half glaring at the cell phone on his desk.

“You might say that love.  A certain idiot PSTaF officer has come up missing.”

Sammy felt an icy chill run down his spine.

“The one that kicked up the fuss right before you were forced to Seal all the magical people in Los Angeles?”

Mikko looked up at him with unhappy eyes.

“That would be the one.”

Sammy reached for Mikko as his mate reached back and burrowed into his arms.

“How bad.”

“Bad.  I was just made to account for my whereabouts for the last week.”

Sammy blinked.

“But you've been working with Sanji and Aipo these last couple weeks on the Joutuni problem haven't you?”

“And it's a good thing I have, and that they have such tight security on their doors.  I can prove by video and ID card swipes where I was.  And I have at least three witnesses for everything but a few hours a night.”

“They think you had something to do with it.”  that was insane, it still took time to fly form Helsinki to Los Angelus and back.  Last time it had been a seventeen hour ordeal each way.

Mikko nodded.

“That stupid kid was the Commissioners _nephew_.  He's the reason we got pulled, he ran and whined about how we were getting in the way and obstructing justice for that poor girl.”

Sammy reeled a little in sick shock. The pride of one rookie PSTaF officer was worth putting the whole city at risk?  It boggled his mind.  Now it was putting that same stupid idiot at risk, and there was nothing anyone magical could do to stop it.

“How could you speak around the restrictions of the Binding?” Even as the person who had set it Mikko was still susceptible.  In some ways he was _more_ susceptible, no matter how far away he was from the area he'd sealed.  Sammy knew good and well that Mikko had fudged the wording enough that it was just the area that was sealed, not each and every person.  The area seal took a lot less power, the other Mikko  would have had to be carried out and not been able to function as long as the seal stayed up.

Mikko's voice was slightly muffled by Mikko having his face buried in Sammy's shirt, but he could still understand even without the pained echo of his love's thoughts.

“He _ordered_ me to.”

That would do it.  And it would force Mikko to give any information not already held under a secrecy oath.  Thank all the gods that Finland's PSTaF people held that _all_ open cases fell under a nondisclosure oath.  It had saved them from losing cases due to tainted evidence.  Leaks from the department were nonexistent.  Mikko couldn't be forced to disclose the names of any of the officers, or even who was on any Hunter team working in the area thanks to how carefully those oaths were worded.

They could thank a demon's kin for that small mercy, and the fact Mikko had _asked_ for only that help before returning it to its home.  That he hadn't made it conditional had made it worth the creature’s time.  But on the thought of oaths...

“Did he lift the ban?”

“No.”

Sammy swore.

The stupid bastard had set things where he could order his lover, his mate, into danger and he wouldn't be allowed to do a damned thing to help protect him.

“Has he demanded you come find the twit?”

Mikko looked up at him.

“No, he explicitly ordered me to not even consider trying to go to L.A.”

Sammy let out a rude noise.

“Well then, it's a good thing that none of us are considering a US tour right now isn't it?”

Mikko's smile was shaky.

“And that all the friends we have from the area are over here.  Jon's petitioned for Sanctuary to our government for the Brides, citing that binding.”

Sammy blinked; but that would mean.

Ohhhh, Sammy grinned.

That commissioner might find himself in very hot water from more than his local population.  Even countries _actively_ at war gave Hunter teams mutual freedoms.  There were some folks you just didn't want to hinder.  Some demons kin and a few rather nasty elemental types loved the chaos and bloodshed of wars and would gleefully incite more violence just to keep them going.

Look at the mess in the Middle East… all over a handful of rather nasty Djinni than no one could contain.

“Remind me to drag Jon and the Brides over for a big team dinner.”

Mikko's smile was more sincere this time.

“They'll probably be dying for some familiar home cooked food by now.”

Sammy cuddled Mikko close and rubbed his cheek over his fine blond hair.

_~Love you babe. ~_

He felt Mikko's smile.

“Love you too.”

~0~

“So the little fuck is missing,” mused Andy as Ash chewed a bite of Mikko's excellent eggplant lasagna.  For rabbit food the stuff was damn good.

“Yep, and the Commissioner is frothing.” agreed Jason.  But he'd also been called to account for his last week of time and been able to cheerfully fuck with the assholes expectations.  He'd been at a medical conference in Geneva and had so many witnesses it was insane as he'd delivered several seminars on interspecies cooperation on complex medical cases.  Julian and Christian had gone with him and while they hadn't had as many witnesses they had a nice string of credit card purchases to document where they had been and when.

“It wouldn't be so bad but the little fuck is the bastard’s nephew.”  Theon was in a mood to be pithy, but he'd been dragged out of bed to answer the idiot's demands.  On the good side the poor junior officer who had drawn the short straw to come get him and Vivian had been horribly apologetic about the whole thing and had brought good coffee and excellent pastry with him to ease the pain of being up just after sunrise.

The kid had a bright future as he was clever enough to know how to cope with folks who hated mornings.

“So,” asked Jinxx as he served up another portion of the more traditional lasagna.  “How many of us have gotten called on the carpet by this ass?”

“All of us have,” Sammy answered.  “And he's been badgering Mikko daily.”

Ash looked up and frowned.  He knew all of the Brides had been forced to account for their whereabouts but they were doing publicity for another tour and a new record so it had been pretty easy for them to politely make the man look stupid.

“Has that gotten documented?” asked Juri as he came back in with an armload of beers.

“Yes.” said Mikko flatly.  “He's also publically said he's not going to release the Oath until his nephew is found.”

“Idiot.” Jan's tone said far more than the single word.  But Ash agreed with the small lycan.

Linke took a swallow of his new beer, and then offered his own observation.  “They'll find him soon, but not the way the idiot wants.  How did he phrase his words on releasing the Oath?”

Mikko grimaced, as did several others.

“Not where when they find him he'll be forced to release the Oath, if that's what you are thinking.”

Linke nodded.

“I did notice that it's hit the international news.  And it’s becoming quite a black eye for the city.”

Vivian let out a rude noise that was echoed by Christian and Jan.

“He's got a death toll over twenty and is refusing to pull his head out of his ass.  Neighboring jurisdictions are finding more victims and his actions are hampering their investigations as well.  Mikko has some serious range, he got a ninety mile radius.  The only good thing was he fudged as much as he could of the intent behind the oath.”

Linke cocked his head as Timo swore under his breath.

“How do you mean?” asked Andy as he narrowed his eyes.

“He set things where only the people inside the boundary are bound, well and himself unfortunately.  There are several teams working on the case for other jurisdictions that were in the city when the oath was cast.  They left, and as long as they are outside that limit they're working just fine.  Thee has been helping with research, as much as we can anyway and we've been able to get the full research team going on it.”

Linke nodded and Ash felt a surge of relief, he hated the idea of his adopted hometown being overrun by this all because of some jackass’s pride.

“Here's a question,” said David.  “How does this man still have his job?  Can't they repeal him?”

Ash snickered, David acted like such a cute little bundle of fluff, but he was observant as hell even if his grasp of English wasn’t always the best.

“Appointed, not elected.” said Andy flatly.  “So, no, they can’t do a recall election and pull him.”  He'd looked it up and Ash had felt the reaction when Andy realized the jackass couldn't even be fired without some serious teamwork from politicians over his head who hated each other's guts.

“Fuck.”  Timo swore and was echoed by several others.

“Yeah.  That was our opinion,” agreed Jinxx flatly.

“But, can't the people over him overrule him?” David continued.

“Nope.  He was explicit; it had to come from his _office_.  Until the idiots over him pull their heads out and get another man in that office we're stuck.” said Jinxx with an unhappy headshake.

“Fucking peachy.”

Ash agreed with Timo's caustic remark.

~0~

Janne blinked at all the new faces in the practice ring.  Kris had warned him that they'd have visitors for his lesson today but he hadn't expected to see over a dozen people working in the ring.  He slowly walked over to the raised observation area where he normally left his gear and watched as a trio worked out against one of the bigger Wardens.  The dark haired man had some nasty tricks up his sleeve and the two lycan who seemed to be his partners had clearly been working with him for a long time as they acted like one organism each covering the other two in a symphony of teamwork that left him feeling envious.

“They are a triad, cub, and have been bonded for many years.”

Janne twitched, but didn't contest the 'cub' remark.  He'd been floored when he learned that Talla was almost ninety, but it had helped him cope when she treated him a bit like a child.

By comparison he rather was.

“Triad?”

Talla smiled at him as he began shedding his extra layers.

“You have seen the bond pairs?”

Janne nodded shortly.  He wasn't blind, he'd seen Talla and her husband and the creepy telepathy thing they could do.  Once he’d realized what it was he'd started seeing it all over the place.

“Bonds can call more than two, those three balance very neatly.”

Janne winced as he watched the littler lycan take out a Warden at the knees as his larger partner leapt at their shoulders.  The dark haired man leapt in to lay his wooden practice sword over the fallen Warden's throat.

Ulf flashed his throat and shifted back to human.

“Yield,” he panted.  The dark haired man nodded and stepped back as his partners shifted back to human. 

Janne blinked, both lycan were blond, one taller than his human partner and blocky in a slightly unfinished looking way, the other was teeny tiny and bounced worse than Ville.

Then he saw a flash of red out of the corner of his eye and spun in place.

Red flashes tended to mean bad things.  It _could_ just be a freakish red levin bolt, even if it was really rare.  He'd seen someone on his walk in who had been chucking the more traditional blue and gold ones.

It wasn't.

Janne boggled at the slender man with wild black hair and his shorter partner.

The taller man was chucking fist sized balls of red light.

His partner was shooting animated targets and his partner was nuking them.

Janne felt his knees give and was grateful for Talla's sudden support as she eased him to the ground.

“He, what...”

“CC is a bonded and in pack, Destroyer.”

It made a difference?

He must have asked that aloud as Talla answered him.

“It makes a very big difference cub.  CC is safe to us, he has his mate and his hunting packs and he has us.”

“P, packs?”  He'd misheard right?  He knew lycan packs considered Hunter groups to be hunting packs.

“”Packs,” agreed a deep and mellow voice.

Janne looked up and felt his jaw fall further open.  The big man squatted down and gently closed his mouth for him.  He might not listen to the man's music, but he'd have had to have lived under a rock to not know and recognize Jyrki 69.

“CC can claim two Hunter groups if he chooses to.  He helped rescue my little brother and his mate last year from a feral pack of Joutuni-nix.”

Janne swallowed hard, the little ice sprites could be pure hell to cope with.  Fortunately they tended to avoid cities, well the vast majority did, but the things were so common it was frightening.

“But, but,”

Jyrki nodded.

“But he's a Destroyer, yes.  He's also one of the kindest and gentlest men I know.”

Janne felt another person come up and settle beside him.

“It's okay Janne, most of the stuff you've heard about Destroyers is media hype because of how dangerous an un-bonded one is under emotional stress.”

Janne shuddered and let Kris wrap a comforting arm around him.

Then Janne squeaked, the pair had shifted.  The shorter one was still shooting, but now the tall one, CC, had his hands on his partner's hips slid up under his shirt so he could touch skin.  The bullets flared that distinctive red and blasted huge holes in the targets.

He turned wide eyes on Kris.

“They can do that?”

Kris gave him a lopsided smile.

“Yes, a tight bonded pair can do that.  It's damned useful in a fight.”

Janne swallowed hard.

“Oh,” he managed weakly, and then he passed out.

~0~

“Are you sure it's a good idea?”

Janne didn't recognize the voice, so he kept his eyes closed and stayed as still as he could.

“He'll learn it sooner or later.  Better now while we can help him cope.”  That was Kris.

“Good point.  It beats finding out in the middle of a fight.”  Janne knew that voice too, it was Christian doing _heavy_ irony, but why was Sammy letting out such a pained sound?

“He'll have to learn that too at some point,” offered Theon in a deceptively mild tone.

“Doesn't mean I have to like it,” said Sammy sounding a touch unhappy.

“Like what?” Janne asked as he levered himself part way upright on one elbow.

Sammy swore under his breath.  But then someone he didn't know bounced in.

“Oh are we getting all the shocks over at once?” he asked with a cheerful sounding lilt to his voice.

“Davii,” groaned the first voice, belonging to a young man with an unruly crest of dark brown hair.

“What?” chirped the bouncy man, as he did something that made Janne feel like he'd hit his head hard somewhere.

He did a little full body shake and then there were wings, huge black feathered things stretching up and out from the man's back before fluffing up and settling just like a birds wings.  There were even little tufts of father and down drifting in the air.

Janne let out a tiny squeak.

“David, did you have to spring it on him like that?” chided Mikko gently.

David grinned brightly and nodded before singing out.

“Your turn.”

Janne boggled, that couldn't possibly mean what it sounded like.

Mikko sighed and after a long look shared with Sammy turned back to him.

“You may want to stay where you are Janne.”

“Why?” he bleated unhappily.

“Less distance to fall,” was Christian's unhelpful remark.

Then Mikko did a similar little shake and a huge set of bat wings was stretching up toward the ceiling before shaking themselves out and settling neatly folded against Mikko's back.

Janne blinked, and then did the thing that made the most sense right then.

He passed out again.

~0~

“That went well,” snarked Timo.

“A Destroyer and two Nephilium are a bit much to take all at once,” teased Jyrki mildly.  “I recall having some highly inappropriate thoughts when I learned about just _one_ Nephilium.  Panic being near the top of the list.  Lilith is not what one calls, ah, stable.”

Mikko grimaced but nodded, then grinned impishly.

“Wonder if he'll faint again when he learns we have two Prophets handy.”

There was a strangled sound and Christian started laughing.

“That would be a yes.” Jason sighed and shot them all a speaking look.  “And don't even apologize; I know you're all enjoying this _way_ too much.”

~0~

Ville boggled.

He and Anssi had hightailed it for the enclave when Kris had called and asked if they could please come as Janne had suffered a bit of a shock.

He knew Mikko.

At least Ville thought he did.

But the Mikko he knew didn't... no.  He remembered being sheltered by someone with arms and wings when Sammy's team had come in to his rescue last spring.  He'd thought he'd imagined things, that he dreamed it after the horror of his kidnapping and near sacrifice.

Apparently not.

Also it appeared that black velvet covered bat wings weren't the only variation of whatever Mikko was.  There was another with fluffy black feathered wings with a slick blue-green-black iridescence that any raven would have been envious of.

Ville blinked and took stock of the faces he saw.

  1. That still left over a dozen faces he didn't know, from the pretty girl who was snuggled into Bazie's side to the tall almost painfully thin man pacing in front of a cluster of similarly dark haired men.



Ville felt his hand reaching out to touch that black velvet wing to confirm his memory.  To his surprise Mikko's nearer wing reached up and around in an odd half hug that confirmed his memories.  The odd little grumble out of Anssi made him smile.

“Janne had a few things rather dropped on him today.”

“Did he faint?”

Ville snickered.  Anssi kept hoping to see something that rattled their drummer so badly that he'd faint.  So far he hadn't been lucky enough to see it happen.

“Yes, several times.” drawled an unfamiliar voice.

Ville turned to see another tall slender man with dark hair striding in flanked by a pair of blonds.

“I'm Chris Linke,” the dark haired one said as he offered a hand for Ville to shake.

“Ville Malja,” Ville felt the distinctive calluses of a guitar player or bassist on the other man's long fingers.

Chris nodded and began introducing the unfamiliar faces.  His two blonds were Juri and Jan, and Ville was relieved to see Jan was shorter than he was, there were so many stupid tall people around.  The man with fluffy wings and flyaway black hair was David; the scowling man with a crest of brown hair and flashing brown eyes was his bond mate Timo.  Another man with soft brown hair and warm blue eyes was Franky.

The thin man who was pacing was Andy, who was bonded to Ash, who shot him a cheerful if faintly lecherous grin.  The other tall man of that group was CC, who was apparently trying to hide behind his bond mate, Jake.  The last was a lycan named Jinxx who offered him a slow but warm smile.

The girl cuddled into Bazie's side was Luna.  Ville had heard about a lycan girl named Luna who was making a name for herself in the Helsinki music scene for running sound.  This must be the same girl, the one he’d heard about used the surname 69, he couldn’t think of any other reason than her being associated with the 69 Eyes.

Anssi introduced himself and made Ville grin by draping his arm around Ville's shoulders in a clear nonverbal 'mine' gesture.

“You might want to sit down for the rest,” warned Jason with a light behind his eyes that made Ville think the lycan was laughing himself half stupid in his own head.

Ville blinked but found a seat, Anssi just stood protectively behind him.

“Don't say we didn't warn you,” jibed Christian.

Anssi just snorted.

“So?  What rattled Janne so badly?”

“A Destroyer, followed by two Nephilium and two Prophets,” answered Theon in a deadpan tone.

Anssi suddenly was groping for a place to sit himself.  Since Jason's revelation that he was a vampire potential and Janne's admission to being a Slayer, Anssi had been doing research almost every spare moment.

He _knew_ what those creatures were.

Ville felt faintly annoyed.

“Okay?  I know what Prophets are.  What are the other two?”

“Uh, I'm the Destroyer.”  CC hesitantly stepped from half behind Jake and cupped his hands, pooling scarlet light in them.

“Babe,” protested Jake.

“He needs to understand,” pleaded CC as the light concentrated down to the size of a small marble that then dropped to the floor.

Ville gulped.

A marble that left a fist sized hole in the ground.

The strangled noise from Anssi would have been funny at any other time.

Ville considered things, and then looked up into a pair of frightened brown eyes.

His next action was pure impulse, he stood up and walked over to the poor guy and hugged him.  CC shivered then hugged him back with a tiny sob of relief.

Ville looked up and saw gratitude in those sad brown eyes.

“You won't hurt me.”  It was a statement, not a question.  Sammy and Mikko clearly trusted this man, therefore he was worthy of his trust as well.

Anssi let out another strangled sound, and then Ville was running back to his side as he slumped over sideways.

“Anssi?”  Ville shook Anssi's shoulder.  “Norsu?”

The snicker and remark about elephant ears made Ville scowl at Archzie.

“It's a play on his name,” came a familiar dry voice.

“Janne,” Ville smiled with relief at his drummer.

“I'm okay Imp.  Just was a bit much all at once.”  Janne shot a half glare of his own at the room at large.

“I don't understand,” Ville muttered unhappily.  Clearly loud enough that Janne heard him as he moved over to help get Anssi laid out comfortably with his head in Ville's lap.

“I'll explain it,” he warned when one started to say something.  “Ville, Destroyers and Nephilium are the top two big bad destroy on sight scary's on most Hunter lists.”  Janne was holding up both hands to stop Ville even as he took a breath to rant.  “Whoa, easy, don't shoot the messenger.”

Mikko sighed, and added his voice.

“Ville in many cases we _belong_ in those top spaces.  A Destroyer that has just lost their bonded is _incredibly_ dangerous.  Any empowered person is, and Destroyers, even the weak ones, have an enormous power pool to draw on.  If CC didn't have people around him and wasn't the man he is he could _easily_ take out a good sized city without breaking a sweat.”  Mikko's smile looked faintly apologetic as he looked back at CC and Jake.

Jake grimaced but nodded, so Mikko continued.

“Fortunately CC _is_ the man he is.  For my kind, well, not all of us like humanity as a general class.  We're just like humans in that regard, we can be good or bad or even really awful.  Depending on our personal strengths we can be as bad as, or worse than, a rampaging Destroyer.”

Ville set his jaw stubbornly.  He watched TV, he read and watched movies.

“That doesn't mean you should be hunted like man killers.”

There were winces.

“No, it doesn't, but I can understand why humanity is scared of us.”

“Sometimes they should be,” offered the feathered Nephilium sadly as he mate cuddled him close.

“That doesn't make it right,” Ville continued stubbornly.

Ville could hear the pained sigh out of Janne and felt a similar sigh out of Anssi.

“Norsu?”

“I'm okay.” Anssi answered as he looked up at Ville.  “Was just a bit of a shock.”  He sighed again then with some clear reluctance began wriggling his way back upright.  “I think I see why they called us.  Janne would tell us and it was better if we were here.”  Anssi shot a challenging look at Mikko.

Mikko nodded.

“It lets us protect ourselves, and you.  There are things out there that would cheerfully use you as hostage to get us close enough to kill if they could.  And would kill you once they were done.”

Anssi blanched and wrapped both arms around Ville.

Ville sighed, he wasn't made of glass, he wouldn't break.  Then he saw the warm smiles and had to grin.

His Norsu loved him, and people thought they were cute.

“If they get any cuter my teeth are going to rot out,” groused Andy, who then scowled at Jinxx.  “And people say you and Sammi are bad,” the sound he made next as his eyes scanned over all the other bond pairs, was rude but not actually _mean_ sounding.  “Cute, cute, cute, I'm drowning in fucking cute.”

Ville blinked then felt Anssi slide a hand over his mouth.

“This isn't the most fun way of doing this,” Anssi whispered in his ear, “but Janne will roll his eyes right out of his head if I go for the fun way.”

Ville slanted a _look_ back at his bassist.  Then he began giggling when Ash wound his arms around the taller man and delivered the cheesiest come on line.

“We don't do cute babe, we do dead sexy.  Wanna go be sexy?”  The way the shorter man waggled his eyebrows left Ville no illusions.

Andy growled.

“Ash...”

“Yeah babe?”

“Run.”

The grin made Ville's eyes go round.

“Why babe?  Gonna spank me?”

The tone was laden with innuendo and humor.

“Tie you up and spank you,” threatened Andy.

Ash's face lit up.

“Cool, I brought handcuffs.”  Then the smaller man was sprinting out the door.  Andy let out a put upon sigh and stalked after him muttering about 'god damned vampire deviant fucks.'

Janne let out a snort, but Anssi cracked up.  Ville nipped Anssi's hand until he lifted it.

“Can we get to the kissing now?”

~0~

“That went better than I thought.” observed Jussi once the Eyes team settled back in the largest of their borrowed rooms.

“Makes up for things being all fucked up elsewhere,” grumbled Archzie.

“It's not Mikko's fault,” protested Jussi.

“No, but it's still fucked up.” Baize reminded softly.  “Have we gotten any solid feedback on that sorcerer?”

Timo grimaced and shook his head negatively.

“All any of our sources has been able to determine is he is likely the murderer of all those children in California.”  Jyrki sounded unhappy, but given his fondness for children he was likely still wishing he could go and deal with the killer personally.

“Linde thinks the killer is that Trovitch that caused the Lovex team trouble last spring,” offered Jussi.  “But he also said all he's got is a feeling based on what he's tasted at the scenes he was able to go look at while H.I.M. was on tour over there.  With that jackasses Oath still in force Burton said he couldn't even be sure if the missing person's reports were of any use at all.”

Jyrki winced, but Burton had been sharing every scrap of information he found with his mate.

“He said he's never been glad to be so utterly non magical before.”

Timo and Archzie let out similarly ironic snorts, and then Timo continued.

“He's still bonded and can speak to and hear you, so he's not an utter dead head.  But I think I'm glad he's found a work around.”

A soft cough made them all turn toward Luna.

“He's been talking to the families hasn't he?”

Jyrki nodded.

“As many as he can, he thinks that as many as another ten children are missing that haven't been reported by other means.”

“Why hasn't the pack leader killed the traitor?”

Jyrki winced, but Archzie and Jussi both growled in agreement.

“It's a human thing Luna.  The stupid idiot is refusing to admit he's wrong and is making things as difficult as possible.  Until the leadership over there quits infighting nothing will change.”

“And the cubs will continue to die.”  Luna sniffed in clear disapproval; she'd gotten a lot more alpha in the last year or so.

Not that Jussi didn't agree with her.

Not that they all didn't agree, just until Mikko was allowed to cancel the Oath sealing he'd been forced to lay over the area none of them could do anything constructive to fix the issue.

At least as long as the killer stayed in California.

Jussi had been having nightmares for over a week about the killer coming here.

He hoped it was just his overactive imagination.

~0~

Ville was gorgeous.

Anssi knew he wasn't alone in thinking that, but he knew no one else had the privilege of seeing Ville like this, naked, sweating and writhing in pleasure.  A lick and a nip to one nipple and Ville was arching up with a needy wail.  If his hands had been free he'd have been clawing Anssi's shoulders, as it was he was trying to pull Anssi in deeper with only his legs wrapped tightly around Anssi's waist.

A firm roll of his hips and Anssi had Ville sobbing in want, so he did it again and sucked hard on one tight and slightly swollen nipple.  He could feel the stickiness of Ville's leaking cock as it bounced into his belly but he was waiting for one thing.

Just one more thing and Ville was just about ready to give it to him.

Ville writhed and struggled helplessly under him, then finally broke.

“Please, god Norsu, _please_!”

Anssi smiled and leaned closer to breathe in Ville's ear.

“Please what kulta?”

“Let me come, please, need it, need...” the rest of Ville's words were lost in a scream of pleasure as Anssi had mercy and tugged the bit of abused ribbon from around his lovers cock and started slamming into him as hard as he could.  He didn't have the time to verbally torment Ville; he was too busy letting out a scream of pleasure of his own as Ville clamped down on him.

Anssi groped up and freed Ville's wrists and was happily cuddling and kissing when he heard a soft chuckle.

“Finally fixed that little virginity problem?” teased Janne.

“ ** _Fuck_** you _Heikkonen_.” snarled Anssi as Ville lazily flipped him off.

“Still like girls.” then his voice went very sober.  “Guys, they've found who the guy who hurt Ville is.”

Anssi felt an icy chill run down his spine.

“Where?”  Ville demanded as he squirmed a little under Anssi.

“He _was_ in California.”

Anssi felt his dread solidify into a solid block of ice in his gut as he half turned to look at Janne.

“Was?”

“Yeah.  That killer who's been keeping so many Hunters up at night?  They've confirmed he's a Trovitch.”

Anssi swore savagely.

“Where is he now?” asked Ville as Anssi reluctantly pulled out of him and shifted up off him.

“They don't know.  Mikko just called me, he's been asked, ordered, to come lift that binding.  They found the one asshole's nephew.”

Anssi swore again, he had a bad feeling.

“He was killed wasn't he?”

Janne nodded grimly.

~0~

Sammy hated the feel of the Oath binding hovering over the city and trying to force him back out.  But Mikko had been called here, and he'd be damned if he was letting his mate go someplace dangerous without him.

Captain Hinojosa had met them at the airport and was taking them as fast as the law would allow back to the office where the oath had been cast.  He'd handed over a thin file and a portable hard drive that felt terribly heavy in spite of its small size.

It was all the case files. The file was all they had on the current body the Trovitch had stolen.

Sammy had wanted to laugh at the bitter irony.

The current body had once held the soul of the man who had been the secret lover of the late PSTaF Officer Jacob Perkins.

~0~

Mikko planted himself squarely in the same spot where he'd cast before, the place felt like ice around him, so he knew he had the exact spot.  He shared a miserable set of glances with the exhausted officers that had gathered around him.  There were faces missing, several of the officers who had been here before were in the hospital after having broken down under the strain of the case.

He took a breath and quietly began the chant that would cancel the original oath, they'd been called back by the PSTaF office, it was the first thing the new Commissioner had done after he'd been sworn in.

The spell didn't break.  Mikko struggled against it, but didn't have the same rage he'd felt initially.  But he kept fighting it, it _had_ to break, or they'd never get any justice for all the dead.

He heard a set of shocked gasps and the sound of breaking glass and felt two sets of arms wrapping around him.

Two sets of arms.

One set of wings.

Two sets of power, one as familiar to him as his own, the other older, stronger and faintly familiar.

Nephilium power.

The spell twisted, but shattered under their combined strength.

And with Lilith's huge wings wrapped around him he was able to tuck his own away and pull his camouflage back up.

When she pulled her wings back Mikko could see an office full of shocked faces

“Guard the innocent,” she asked softly then was gone, out a broken window that had been intact when they came in.

“Holy, fucking shit,” gasped Hammy as his knees gave out and left him sitting on his ass on the floor.

Maria's exclamation was longer, and more profane, but Spanish lent itself to impassioned swearing.

“Was that?” started one officer as he clutched at something under his shirt.

“Yeah, holy shit...” agreed another as the first groped for his chair.

“I don't feel any different?  Did it work?”

Mikko shared a look with Sammy, who nodded back.

_~I got it love. ~_

“It broke, but it was a fight.”  Sammy managed a weak smile.  “And you wouldn't, your older oaths to the department protected you from it.”  Then he hugged Mikko tightly as his lover broke down and quietly cried over the wasted lives.

~0~

Janne had a bad feeling, he'd been delayed getting back from the grocers and had chanced a risky shortcut to get back faster.

His unease increased when he saw flashing lights near the apartment, then spiked when he saw their nosy elderly neighbor talking tearfully to one of the officers.

Janne sped up from his trot and was caught by one of the other officers.

“Sir, you can't go in...”

“I live here,” he blurted out.  “Ville, Anssi?  Where are they?  They were home when I left.”

The grim look on the young man's face told Janne all he needed to know.

~0~

Anssi groggily looked up at the man who was tormenting his Ville; he'd tried getting to his side and taken several hard blows from the bastards helpers.  Even now two of the mammoth idiots had him by the arms and would cheerfully punch him in the gut or smack him in the side of the head again.

Three more of the lumbering hulks held Ville down as the bastard did something with a paintbrush on Ville's naked chest.

Whatever he saw it didn't make him happy, as he nearly threw the brush down in disgust.

He gestured sharply and the muscle holding him was dragging him over to lay him on his back beside Ville. 

Anssi struggled, but couldn't even get a hand over to touch Ville.  Another mute statue of a man moved and ripped Anssi's shirt open to bare his chest.

The bastard began working on him as well and Anssi struggled, trying to make a mess of things, but all that got was his captors crushing him into the ground to hold him still enough for their leader to work.

“Hnn, something at least.  Secure them.  Bring me the whore.”

Anssi didn't like the sounds of that, but couldn't do a damn thing as they were dragged away and thrown into a tiny room together.

The last man looked down at them with an evil grin then walked out shutting the door tightly behind him.  Anssi would have had to have been deaf to not hear the rattle of a heavy chain and an equally large padlock clicking closed.

But he was scrambling for Ville.

“You okay?”

Ville nodded and for once just clung tightly to him.

Anssi tucked Ville's head under his chin and prayed that whoever these lunatics were they hadn't caught Janne as well.

If Janne was free they had a chance.

He prayed with quiet fervor.

~0~

Julian swore when he felt the wards on Lapko's apartment shatter.  He'd set the things to break and leave no trace if someone hostile came after the small group.  The second set of wards would be invisible except to a very well trained and very sensitive eye.

It told him what had broken in, how many and who was taken out.

A sorcerer had broken in with demon infested constructs and a few human helpers.  Julian had a suspicion that those ‘helpers’ were possessed, but with the demon constructs also in the mix he couldn’t be sure.

He'd grabbed Anssi and Ville, but Janne hadn't been home.

Bad enough all by itself.

But it was _who_ the sorcerer was that had him reaching for the alarm ward stone that would alert everyone who wore a chip from it that there was trouble, and the nature of that trouble.  Julian had made a new one after they'd let Ville, Anssi and Janne in on Mikko's secret.  He'd been needing to for a while given how closely Lovex now worked with some of the other teams.  If nothing else this stone would act as an alarm to let the other teams know if something took out his whole team.  Julian hoped it never came to that, but after one memorable, nightmarish fight in France he wanted to be sure if they went down the Hunters closest to them would have some warning and time to prepare.

He let out a tiny sigh of relief as he watched the little chip marks in the main stone light up in answer to his call.

The Eyes were all home, H.I.M was responding as were the Negative and Panik teams.  Julian knew Juri and Jan were here witnessing an arranged marriage that would give the Finnish and German packs another formal alliance tie.  It helped the two chosen to cement things actually liked each other.

The Brides were too far away to help and the Bizarres should be in Japan right now, also too far away to assist.  All their chips flickered in answer though, letting him know they’d gotten the warning, Andy’s flared brightly before dimming back down.  Julian smiled and rested a fingertip in that tiny divot.  The young Prophet wished his team was closer, but this time they couldn’t drop everything on the excuse of a venue problem and come to help.  Julian blinked in surprise at the tingle that ran down his arm.

It felt like Andy returning the favor Jyrki had done, and was allowing them to access his power pool.  This far away it wasn't likely to be much, but sometimes all you needed was a tiny bit to stay breathing.

The chip that marked Kris also lit up brightly. And a rune flickered into being with Luna's chip flickering on. 

Julian blinked, that was unexpected.

He hadn't known Luna counted as a Warden.

~0~

Janne was a half step from being in full panic mode and let out an unashamed sob of relief when the door to the interrogation room opened and Kris came striding in with a familiar long and thin duffel over his shoulder.

The black leathers looked superficially like the leathers a serious motorcyclist wore, the ones with skid plates and heavy reinforcements in places, but Janne recognized Hunter armor.

“We'll get them back,” he promised as he hugged Janne tightly.

“How did you know?  They wouldn't let me call...” Janne sputtered out as Kris laid the thin duffel down and shrugged off the strap of a more regular bag Janne hadn't registered and zipped it open.

“Julian set an alarm ward on your place.  He sent out the alarm as soon as it broke.”  Kris pulled out a set of dark leathers that looked eerily similar to his own. “You need to change, and we can get out of here.  Luna, Christian and Juri are searching by scent, Jan and Linke are hacking records to find where our little Trovitch bastard could have gone to ground.”

Janne swallowed hard, then nodded and began changing. Feeling uneasy about the cool, slick feel of leather under his fingers.

“If it helps any the armor was made from lycan kills.”

Janne looked up in surprise.

Strangely, it did help.  Lycan used every bit of a kill and gave more honors to the animals they hunted and ate than most humans ever bothered to.

He still found it a touch disturbing that Kris had gotten the lycan armorers to make him a set of Hunting armor without telling him.  He knew it was _traditional_ , a gift from teacher to student, but he didn't remember getting measured for anything that fir as well as this stuff did.

Janne began re-lacing his boots back tight and checked his sword and dagger when the young officer who had initially caught him came in with something in his hands.

“Kris, the notice has gone out and Private Line has come back as in the area.  Sammy said you'd need this.”  He handed over a small package and Janne’s phone.

Janne blinked when the small package was unwrapped and revealed a handgun and several clips.

Loaded clips.

Kris gave the man a grim nod and checked the handgun, then carefully loaded it and tucked it away somewhere before pocketing the extra clips.

“Thanks Aipo.”

“We've given the German team full access to everything we have.  Koulier says it was kind of them to ask _before_ hacking the system and he'd like to know how they did it, but after this is over.”

Kris managed a wry, lopsided smile.

“I'll pass it on.  I'm sure Linke will be happy to sit down with Antti and Juli to help them cover those holes.”

“Stay safe.”

“We do our best,” said Kris grimly as they headed out at a near run.

~0~

Jyrki watched as Mikko laid out a circle in the dirt.  Burton shifted uneasily in his arms but settled when Jyrki's arms tightened around him.

Archzie was watching with a similar focus but Bazie was pacing in tiny worried circles as Timo chewed his lip while checking his texts.

Across the circle Jyrki could see Ville cuddling Jussi in a nearly identical hold to the one he had on Burton.  Linde and Midge were watching Mikko but Gas was watching Baize pace.

Jonne looked up sharply which made Antti, Jay and Hata all look up at him.  Larry didn't even glance up from the cards he'd been idly laying out and picking up in restless sequence.

“Kris got him, they'll be here shortly.”

Julian nodded as he brought over another candle.

“Any trouble?” the Panik teams Timo asked from his spot on the couch, Jyrki was tempted to call him Tibbi like his little lover did, just to keep the two Timo's straight in his mind.  His Timo was pacing in small circles just like he always did when they were planning out a large mutli team strike.

Jonne shook his head no.

“Warn him about the last turn would you, it was slicker than snot when I came up it,” asked Jason as he strode in, setting his helmet on the side table beside several others.

Jonne nodded again and his eyes went unfocused.

“Where's Snack?” asked Sammy from his spot behind Mikko.

“He and Juri were patrolling to keep the fidgets down,” answered Linke without looking up from his laptop.  Jan was similarly engrossed in his own screen.

“Okay, next question, where's Private Line?”

“Coming up the drive.” answered Theon as he and Vivian came into the circle.  “They were right behind us.  The rain eased off, but it’s still muddy and slick as hell and they don’t know the road as well as we do.”

Vivian didn't stop, he just carried his blue silk armful straight to Mikko who took it and carefully unwrapped it to lay the circle of polished bronze that was in it flat on the bare earth of the prepared circle.

“Good, the more eyes the better for this.”

“Eyes for what?” asked the Private Line singer as he led his team in.  Black hair with ginger scruff looked rather odd.

“Scrying.  Mikko's going to shoot for current location.”

The two Sammy's shared a long look.

Eliaz grimaced.

“You knew it was coming.”

Sammy grimaced and Sammy Black settled on his knees behind Mikko.  Jyrki quietly reminded himself to think Sammy and Sami to help keep his own confusion levels down.

“Doesn't mean I have to _like_ it.”

“None of us are exactly liking this, suck it up Sambo,” snarked Kris as he stalked in a bewildered but determined Janne a half step behind him.

“Silly question from the ignorant human here,” asked Burton.  “Why do we need this much firepower?”

Jyrki let out a low snort. Six full teams did seem a bit like overkill.  But then Mikko answered his voice creepy in its distraction.

“We're going after a Trovitch.”

Illy's swearing was fervent and left Burton going 'oh' rather weakly in confusion.

 _~They steal the bodies of their own children love, mothers to daughters, and fathers to sons.  We want to end the cycle with this one. ~_ Jyrki whispered in his mates mind.

“Oh.”

~0~

Anssi hadn’t been able to do much more than doze.  Ville had finally dropped into an uneasy sleep and Anssi was cuddling him close in an effort to keep them both warm.

He’d heard people moving around outside the locked door, and once had heard the chain rattle, but the door never opened.

A scream had Ville jolting awake and both of them staring in terror at the door.

Silence.

Anssi shivered and felt Ville shudder in his arms.

“We’ll be okay, Janne will find us.”

Anssi hoped it was true, hoped he wasn’t lying to Ville, but was scared half stupid.  How had Ville managed to cope with being locked up alone by his kidnappers?

But there wasn’t any other noise.

Just cold silence.

~0~

Sami wanted to throw his phone across the room, but didn’t only by main force of will.

That the other Sammy was looking at him like he’d lost his mind helped a little, but then his eyes glazed over and Spit and Illy were grabbing for him to try and get him safely down before he fell as some sort of fit hit him.

Eliaz was on his knees by Sammy’s side a breath later and Japa had bolted for the kitchen.  Sami could feel the fizz of Mikko’s surprise overwhelm the concern he’d been feeling only a moment before when he’d realized that Sami had the Legate they both couldn’t stand on the phone demanding things.

Japa was back with a mug of coffee that by the color had been killed with at least cream, probably sugar as well.  He forced the mug into Sammy’s trembling hands and helped the singer take small sips of the hot liquid.

Mikko was there a heartbeat later.

“What did his high fucky fuck face want?”

Sami had to smile, but at least asking the question aloud let the others in on another potential problem.

“We won’t find her.  She’s already dead,” managed Sammy, which had everyone handy turning to look at him like he’d lost his mind.

Admittedly that was Sami, Mikko and a random handful from the other teams currently sharing space in the Warehouse.

Kris was one of them and he moved in to drop to one knee by Sammy one hand on the singers shoulder.

“What did you See?”

Sami gave himself a hard mental slap.

_~He’s clairvoyant? ~_

Sami locked eyes with Mikko and got a confirming nod as his mate clarified down their bond.

_~More a mix of clairvoyant and true seer, but yeah.  I wonder what he Saw. ~_

“Dark haired vampire girl getting forced to feed on a prepared victim then bled dry.  She was so young it was easy to starve her to desperation.” Sammy let out an unhappy half sobbing gasp and continued.  “You won’t find her, her killer pocketed her fangs.  The rest, dust, couldn’t take sunlight.”

Sami grimaced.  So much for their asshole of a Legate getting his first, and only, Childe back.  She might have been a spoiled and selfish bitch, but no-one deserved to be bled down and then left to die in the sun.

Sammy looked up with haunted gray green eyes.

“Who was she?”

“Her name was Messilandre, she was the local Legate’s first made Childe.”

“Was?” asked Jussi softly.

Sami nodded.  “He made her last summer, and she's been rather fragile.”

“You said prepared victim.  Prepared how?” asked Linde in a quiet voice laced with an unspoken fear.

“A potion, aloe and hawthorn, I’m not sure what else.” Sammy gave in to the urging of his teammates and drank a bit more of the coffee.  Then took a slug from a bottle Illy held to his lips.

Sami shared a look with Mikko, whose face had gone white.

Japa looked up.

“Mik?”  The guitarist took a quick look at the faces of the vampires he could see.  “Guys?”

“You think?” Jussi asked, his face pleading for Mikko to say something that would deny his fears.

Mikko grimaced and nodded.

“Vittu,” breathed Linde in horror.

“ _Guys_?!”

Mikko’s face was gray and his voice wooden as he answered Japa’s frightened question. “A potion made of Aloe, cowslip, hawthorn and bayberry in a base of stagnant water that at least one child has been drowned in and virgin’s hearts blood, fed to a vampire will stabilize their blood if it’s then drawn within an hour of it being consumed.  It has to be fed to a human first in at least five doses of ten drams and the human must be drained to death.  Then they would have drained the vampire dry by driving a hollow spike into her heart and left the remains to crumble in the light of dawn.”  Mikko swallowed hard.  “A pinch of those ashes would be the final ingredient to the mix to force convert a potential.”

Japa slid over sideways to land on his ass as he stared up at Mikko, his own face going pale.  Suddenly a few of the horrific deaths in California had a sickening explanation.  It was all preparations for a horrible potion.

“It’s the first step of the Brugerian Rite.  The next will be force feeding a measure of that blood to a Potential, inflicting a mortal wound and burying them still alive.”

Mikko’s eyes were screaming, and Sami couldn’t stay still any longer, he was up and wrapping his little love in his arms murmuring that they’d made it out, that he and Vivi were okay.  But Mikko continued.

“They are going to start the change on Anssi. We need to hurry.  Ask Jason if I can use his Rune bowl to scry in and ask Julian if I can use his bloodstone _Teiwaz_ Rune.”

Kris started out the door when Mikko stopped him.

“Kris, I can’t promise it won’t be destroyed.”

Kris nodded, and then was gone, he could hear Mikko asking if anyone had a black mirror he could destroy for the ritual and shuddered as he ran.

Mikko _hated_ using black mirrors.

~0~

Anssi was groggy when he registered he was being dragged out of the cell.  Blearily he tried to find Ville, but his legs didn’t want to work and his eyes kept refusing to focus quite right.  He thought he could hear Ville screaming, and it didn’t sound like he’d found a mouse in the bath again.

Ville screaming was important so he kept trying to force the fog away from his mind.

It took a mouthful of something that tasted like blood to force the fog away, but he was choking and trying to spit the liquid out and being forced to choose between drinking and drowning.

Ville was screaming his name.

Anssi struggled, swallowed, choked and tried to find his little lover.

The hands holding his arms and head didn’t budge and the bowl, cup whatever, was back pouring more of the foul liquid down his throat.

When the bowl moved away Anssi was coughing and fighting to breathe around the horrific burning in his throat, but he finally saw Ville, held firmly by two huge man shaped mountains with eyes that were fully blacked out.

“Ville,” he croaked out and struggled, but then he screamed as a lance of white fire slammed into his left shoulder.

Ville screamed and turned into a full on wildcat.  Anssi could hear the sick wet snap of the goon on Ville’s left having his knee kicked in a _very_ wrong direction.  Ville still had a runner’s legs and could kick like an angry horse if he was riled up enough, he’d felt the power in those legs not all that long ago, but Anssi had never seen Ville actually _break_ bones before.

The goon let out an unholy howl and a flood of black smoke poured out of his mouth then dissipated leaving only a withered husk behind.

Part him wanted to throw up, but right now his shoulder was on fire and an echoing burning ache was crawling around his belly and up his throat.  He’d never realized how horrible it could be to _need_ to throw up and not be able to.

And the other goon had wrapped both arms around Ville, lifting his feet clear of the ground so he couldn’t repeat that little trick and get away.

The world was spinning, and Anssi felt someone dragging him back, away from Ville as he struggled to get to him.

The world went dark, and all he could hear was Ville screaming his name.

~0~

Jussi swallowed hard as he watched Illy kindling a blessed fire and setting it onto the prepared base laid on a black mirror that Linke had donated.  That didn't have him creeped out, well it _did_ , but only because he knew why Mikko hated using a black mirror to scry with.

 _Things_ came out of black mirrors when Mikko used them, generally very _bad_ things.

What had him creeped out was that the fire was laid under Jason's big bronze rune bowl balanced on a precarious looking tripod of what looked like braided vines.  The bowl had been filled with water gathered drip by precious drop from a spring high up on a cliff overlooking a lake outside the city, rather challenging to get given it was still raining and no rain drops could be allowed in the mix.  Also in the bowl was Julian's _Teiwaz_ rune, the bloodstone one, not the onyx one and a generous double handful of rather dangerous herbs.

Jyrki had seen the herbs go in and made a comment about not wanting to drink the mix only to be reassured that drinking the results wasn't on the agenda for any of them.  He'd then had to explain to Burton why drinking the highly poisonous mix was a bad idea; there had been enough each of just the mistletoe and nightshade to kill a horse.  There had been more dangerous things in the mix; a string of rosary peas had Jyrki gulping at the level of overkill.  Just one of those would take out a young vampire, never mind a human.

Sammy had looked sickened, but had stayed silent, and that left Jussi wondering what significance that mix had for the Seer.

Something he'd noticed that was odd was that Mikko had asked all of them to come with their hair completely loose and to wear nothing with any sort of knots on it. Not a big issue for most of his team but something that was a bit odd for some of the others.

Sami didn't even have his usual headscarf covering his honey blond hair, and Mikko's golden blond hair was a lot longer than the usual braid he wore it in indicated.  Linde even had unbraided the dreds that he normally had tied back so they wouldn't get in his face.  None of them wore anything with a drawstring or that tied or laced.  Most of them had resorted to overly long shirts and foregone trousers entirely.

There wasn't any discussion, the teams just gathered around the peculiar assemblage in a loose circle and waited as Julian set the outer wards.

Jason came forward with the tiny knife made from volcanic glass.

“For the record I'm not wild about this.”

Mikko looked up and offered both his hands palm up over the Rune bowl.

“I'm not thrilled either, but we're not going to get a better source of information.”

Jussi gulped and took comfort in the feel of his Ville's arms wrapping around his shoulders and the kiss that was pressed into his hair.

Jason grimaced as Sami stepped up to plant both hands on his mate's shoulders.

Then Jason cut two small marks in the palms of Mikko's hands and Mikko turned his hands palm down to let the blood drip into the steaming mess in the bowl.

The prickle of power made the hairs on his arms and neck stand on end and Jussi was in a position to see the shocked look on Janne's face when the young Slayer registered exactly what the rising power levels meant.

What made Jussi cock his head in curiosity was the way Mikko was phrasing the summoning.

It wasn't a 'come or else I'll drag you' summoning, it was a more polite 'if you aren't busy' summoning.

Not at all what you normally saw when dealing with demons.

Even more interesting Mikko wasn't saying the demon's name aloud.

That implied some things that Jussi wasn't sure he was entirely comfortable with.  But he'd seen Mikko treat some demons fairly decently, before sending them back home.

It was just something weird that made Mikko, Mikko. 

More importantly Jussi had seen those demons Mikko had treated well treat him well in return.  Sometimes to a degree that made him question what he knew about demons in general.

But his attention got dragged back to how the bowl was smoking when he heard the sharp snap of glass breaking.

That must have been the black mirror.

Then there was loud whooshing noise and a swirl of smoke that set the guys closer to the flame coughing, well other than Mikko and Sami.

When it cleared there was a demon standing across from the bowl holding a bit of something pressed tightly to one of Mikko's hands and apparently scolding him.

At first all Jussi saw was a fall of silky black hair and pale skin and a pair of crazy tight iridescent black pants.

Then the demon let go of Mikko's hands with what looked like a remark to Sami that had the vampire smiling wryly back.  Then he was pacing around the circle.

The demon was pretty enough to be a girl with all that fine hair and he had a playful smile lurking around full soft lips and humor dancing behind unnaturally violet eyes. He’d done a lazy circuit of the room and stopped in front of Kris.

“Well, hello gorgeous.” He purred giving Kris a very thorough look up and down that left no doubts at all to where his mind had gone.

Kris managed a tight smile, but didn’t answer.  It was bad enough he had a demon in the room with him without it hitting on him.  But they needed answers, and needed them fast, and apparently this particular demon owed Mikko a favor or six.  There was no other reason for one to answer as mild a summons as the one Mikko had used and have answered as promptly as he had, otherwise.

“Mere,” clearly a nickname of some sorts.  Jussi's experience with demons was limited, but they all seemed to have ludicrously long or convoluted names.

The demon sighed and rolled his head around to look back at Mikko.  The gesture was oddly familiar and it nagged at Jussi a bit, but he was distracted by Mikko's words.

“He’s mated.”

The demon let out a plaintive half sigh and took a step sideways to try again with Japa.  Japa looked like he was torn between being revolted and being flattered.  It wasn't every day a Hunter got propositioned by a demon.

Then again this particular demon _had_ just propositioned a Slayer, something that was rather suicidal given that Slayers and demons really didn't get along.

“Mere,” warned Mikko, some humor lacing his tone.

The demon looked back at Mikko.

“This one’s taken too?” came the plaintive half whine.

“Straight,” answered Mikko with only a tiny twitch of a smile on his face.

The demon rolled his eyes skywards in clear frustration.

“Lucifer, why are all the cute ones either taken or straight?” came the plaintive moan.

“You’re blessed?” offered Jussi, still a bit boggled at the idea that he was talking to a demon and not trying to kill or banish it.  But the plaintive complaint reminded him to much of some girls wailing about all the good men being taken or gay.

The demon sighed sadly as he shot a mournful look over at Jussi.

“Triply blessed, are these _gorgeous_ specimens of male beauty around and I can’t even tempt _one_.”  His face turned hopeful for a moment. “Single?”

Jussi shook his head just as Ville growled in an adorably protective way and wrapped both his arms around Jussi’s shoulders.

The demon let out another mournful sigh, but didn’t press the issue.  Something Jussi found odd given what he knew about demons and their fondness for pushing boundaries.

“Bother.”

“Sorry Mere, but we're stuck with business this time around.”

The demon had begun pacing, stopping to look at each of them before sighing mournfully and moving on.

“I _so_ hate business trips here, but at least with you I know I'll be fed and housed well and the trip back won't be unpleasant.”

Jussi barely kept the giggle behind his teeth.  This Mere sounded like a business traveler lamenting crappy hotels, worse food and hellish flights.  Things he could sympathize with, given some of what he'd seen while on tour with the band.

The only change was when he stopped in front of Luna, Bazie had already let out a low growl when Mere sketched a bit of a bow to her and collected an odd little nod in return.  The look he’d given her was an oddly respectful one, not the mix of wistful lust and playful lechery.

“But you said business; this must be to do with that idiot Trovitch who can't get any of the elders to agree to a demon wife contract.”

~0~

Janne let out a strangled noise when the demon mentioned Trovitch's in such an offhand way.  He instantly wished he hadn't as it got the things attention focused on him.

It was pretty; if he'd gone for males at all he'd have happily fucked it.  The naked chest was too flat to do anything for him, but would probably have had Ville cocking his head in interest, at least until he got caught looking and went and hid behind Anssi. It had miles of silky soft, slightly wavy black hair and bottomless violet eyes, eyes that bored into his own until he was able to yank his gaze away.

“Ah, I see.  Hello pretty little Slayer.”

Janne swallowed hard.

“What do you know about the Trovitch?” he asked in a hard tight voice.

The demon cocked his head and scrutinized him for a long moment, looking creepily like Mikko in a pensive mood as he did, before answering.

“He's making a right nuisance of himself for one.  Promising an innocent and failing over and over again.  He's grabbing children thinking just because they were young meant they were untouched and innocent, and never thinking that the fact he could get his hands on the children in the first place _might_ possibly mean _something_ wasn't right.”

Janne felt his fists clenching at the casual mention of the murders of children, and the implication those children had been abused beforehand.

“That troubles you.”

Janne glared.

“I'm not a monster,” he grit out, wishing he had his blades with him, but the only thing that even came close to being a weapon was the tiny knife Jason had used.

“Yes, it troubles you.  Good.” was the cryptic response.  Then the demon paced away to circle around a bemused Linde and trail light fingers over the vampire’s long blond dred locks.  But his words were still directed back at Janne.  “We generally don't like humans little Slayer.  Your world is too smelly, too dirty and has far too many stupid people in it.  Home is much nicer.  But this Trovitch doesn't much care about what we want and the lesser orders are too stupid to wriggle away when he calls.  At least at first, very few accept a second summons without a very good reason.  Unfortunately him having their Names tends to be a good reason.  Hard to wriggle out of things when they have your Name.”

The demon paced off again to circle Sammy, stroking a gentle hand over the Seer's back, the almost tender touch completely at odds with the faint feral smile on the demon's face.

“He's lost one servant, and won't get that one back no matter how he calls it.  He didn't ward his vessels against damage and your little brother set him free.” the demon's smile was a bit bitter.  “It wasn't _comfortable_ , and he'll limp for a very long time, but he's not bound now and will avoid being bound again.  He's not taking offence at your brother, he knows it wasn't personal, but he's very displeased with that sorcerer, and wishes a chance to take his pound of flesh.”

Janne wanted to grab the thing and demand to know what it knew about Ville and Anssi.  But the Demon was back in front of him and staring into his eyes.

“I am forbidden to tell you _where_ they are, but I can tell you it's the last place a Hunter would look.”

Janne let out a low moan; they were no better off than before. But he heard Sami start swearing.

The demon let out a tiny bark of laughter and turned with a sultry smile.

“I knew you were a smart one.” then those eyes were back.  “You have three days little Slayer, and take comfort in the fact the Trovitch has severely underestimated your brothers.”

Janne could see the shudder that hit the demon then and wondered at it.  But Christian was right by the things side with a box and Mikko was chanting softly.

“I haven't settled my debt yet little Prince, but next time I'd really rather be here for a vacation.”

Janne yelped at the sudden gust of wind and ducked to try and escape the blowing sand.

When he looked up again the fire and the mirror were gone, as was the tripod that had held the bowl up over the flames.

Janne staggered over to stare down into the blackened bronze bowl.  In the bottom was a softly glowing red stone.  No potion or signs that anything else had ever been in the bowl to begin with.

“Demons are interesting creatures,” mused Jyrki as he stared meditatively at the bowl.

“But they lie, all the books say to watch out because they lie.” protested Japa.

“It depends on the demon,” warned Christian mildly as Julian reached into the bowl with both hands to gently pick up the rune stone with a low sound of surprise.

“Okay, explanations for the slow human?” asked Burton plaintively.  Janne felt just as lost as the man sounded.

“Some demons have better weapons than lies,” offered Jason as he checked over Mikko's hands, the two wounds had mostly stopped bleeding so let Sami lap gently at each and kick started the healing process.

“Okay?” Janne was heartily tired of fishing for information.

“Some of them use the truth as a weapon.  Use a little truth and let people jump to conclusions, it’s very damaging.” said Jason as he stared down into the bottom of the bowl with a meditative look on his face.

Janne grimaced, but he supposed he could see that.

“So,” started Kris as he wound an arm around Jonne.  “Two questions.  What was in the box?”

“Chocolates,” answered Jason with a wry grin.  “Mere loves them, well sweets in general.  But it's a good token bribe for a lot of demons of his ilk.”

“Okay.  Three questions then, what kind of a demon was he?”

“Incubus.” answered Christian as he looked at the softly pulsing stone in Julian's hands.  “We'll need to put _that_ in the safe when we get home.”

Janne blinked in confusion as the others gave the stone and bowl careful once-overs.

“What's the last question?” he asked when it looked like Kris wasn't going to ask.

“Hmm?” started Kris, then he nodded as he remembered.  “Why did he call Mikko 'little prince'?”

“Probably the same reason he calls Jyrki and Sami 'lord'” teased Theon mildly.

Janne sighed in frustration.

“Why does he do _that_?”

Theon shrugged.

“We don't know.”

Well _that_ was helpful.

~0~

“Why are we checking churches again?”

“What's the normal place for the Rites?” Sami answered Janne's question.

“Old graveyards?”  He'd had to ask Mikko and had almost instantly regretted it, the man had handed him a ludicrous pile of references on the Rite.  He liked research, but he was kind of stressed right now.

“So we're going to the last place anyone would expect to be used.  Actively used churches still standing on sanctified ground.”

Janne gave the cathedral a sidelong look.  It was actively in use.  But what lunatic would use _this_ cathedral?  It was only the most famous and busiest one in the country.  The damned thing had three tour groups wandering around it like lost geese right now.

Then he remembered the demon's words and kicked himself.

The last place a Hunter would check.  Turku cathedral was the last place he'd have ever considered.  Heavily traveled and on a teeny tiny plot of land in the middle of a busy city.  Not the isolated location that was best for all sorts of nasty rituals.

Sami's eyes narrowed.

Janne felt a flutter of unease.

“Here.  Let's go.”

“But,”

“Janne, he's got watchers, if we get closer without backup we’re just as dead as he wants Ville to be.  Let’s go.”

Janne let out a small whimper but let the bigger man haul him away from the cathedral and its tiny grounds.

~0~

Ville shivered and huddled into Anssi's flannel shirt.  He'd bloodied his hands pounding on the door and screamed himself hoarse before crawling back into the corner furthest away from the door to weep out his frustration and rage.

He still had Anssi's shirt, had his scent as small cold comfort.  He closed his eyes and focused as hard as he could on the spicy and musky scent that clung to the shirt, a combination of Anssi's sweat and aftershave.

If he tried hard enough he could pretend Anssi was still here, that he was sitting with his back nestled into the taller man's chest, that he had Anssi's arms around him.

Ville curled into a tight ball and threw himself into the fantasy that he was back at home, in the bed he'd been sharing with Anssi.  He flung himself back into the memory of the night after their first kiss.

He'd had a fit of bashfulness and Anssi had only just managed to keep him from locking himself in the bathroom.  He'd kissed him again when he'd tried to escape and find somewhere else to hide.  Anssi had backed him into the bathroom door and proved to him that the crazy need he'd felt with that first kiss wasn't a fluke.  Ville had been desperately horny, had come back to his senses being stripped to his skin and nudged under steaming water.

Showering with a lover had become an instant favorite of his.

Ville had been sure he'd drown himself when Anssi had backed him into the tiles and gone to his knees.

The feel of a hot wet mouth on his dick made him crazy, he hadn't known quite what to do with his hands and ended up with them fisted in Anssi's red hair as he struggled to thrust, but Anssi had held him pinned securely where he couldn't do anything other than squirm and beg until he'd screamed and come.

Masturbation had _nothing_ on a good blow job.

He'd wanted to return the favor but Anssi had had other plans.

Plans involving fingers, a bit of the conditioner he used on his hair and Ville's ass.

Ville had been begging before Anssi had gotten the second finger in.  It had felt weird right up until Anssi hit something inside him, and then he was going crazy.

Two fingers and Anssi had him out of the shower and pinned to the rug in front of the bath.

Three and Ville was begging for Anssi to stop because the feeling was so intense he really believed he was going to piss himself.

Anssi had just smiled at him and slowed down until his body adjusted.

Then he'd slid a forth finger in and Ville really thought Anssi was going to fist him and make him piss himself.

Then he'd nibbled on a nipple.

Ville had thought tits were something only girls got off on having sucked, but as soon as Anssi’s teeth had closed on that hard nub he'd learned otherwise.

Then he'd wailed in loss as the fingers slipped out of his ass.  They'd been making him crazy, and he wanted them back.

Anssi had asked if he was sure.

Ville remembered threatening him if he stopped.

Anssi had laughed at him, then tucked a shoulder under one of Ville's knees and done something that had him clawing for Anssi's shoulders.  Something that made the empty feeling go away and made him crazy.

He'd come right as Anssi had made his first thrust and been sobbing in mortification.

Anssi has held him until the shaking stopped, kissed him to help him get his sobs under control then slowly, gently fucked him hard again.

His third orgasm had taken longer, and the buildup had him clawing Anssi's shoulders and begging incoherently in need.

Then he'd blacked out.

He'd awakened naked, clean and in his own bed with Anssi curled up behind him.

Then Anssi had shown him how amazing rimming felt, had gotten him to hands and knees and turned him into a writhing little harlot but it felt so good.

Ville jolted out of his fantasy and memory mix to the feel of hands on him and knew they weren't the ones belonging to his Norsu, so he started kicking and screaming, fighting them as they dragged him out of the cell.

He heard another unholy scream, but this time there were more hands to replace the ones that fell away.

~0~

“Where the hell did they bury Anssi?” hissed Jussi as he scanned the tiny plot of ground behind the church, they had a street that while maybe not _busy_ was still fairly well traveled behind them.  Yes, it was the middle of the night and there were a lot fewer folks around, but it was still the middle of a busy tourist town for crying out loud.

“One of the crypts inside, we think.  One of the new ones, the wards on the old ones are still sound.” answered Julian as he also watched the oddly out of focus stone wall of the cathedral.

“Joy.  I wish my Ville was somewhere safe.” Jussi grumbled unhappily.  Ville had his inhaler, but he’d gone in armed only with his crucifix and a vial of holy water, **_not_** the gun Jussi had wanted.

Julian smiled.

“Christian and Jason are thinking the same thing about me.  But Ville and Sammy are a grand distraction for the demon watchers.”

“What are they _doing_ in there?”  Bad enough he wasn't by his mate’s side, but he was outside and had solid stone walls between them.

“Being lead singers with a muse from hell,” whispered Vivian as he slipped up beside them.  “Theon's being a little diva bitch and Sami is doing his best to do his 'can't kill him but _want_ to' stoic act.”

“Where's Mi...” Jussi shuddered under the weight of the crawly feeling only a high power something overhead ever instilled in him.  “Never mind, I felt him fly over.”

“That was David.”  Julian said as he peered up into the thick darkness around them.  “Mikko's perched on the bell tower.”

Jussi boggled.

“How the heck did he get up there?”

“He went up the steps with that tour group, the historical society one.”

Jussi sighed; he kept forgetting Mikko had an uncanny ability to appear as exactly what people expected to see.  It drove him crazy, and before they'd known what he was had driven Jyrki half out of his mind with wanting to know how he did it.

He was about to ask about the other teams when Julian stiffened.

“Oh shit.”

~0~

Anssi could hear Ville singing broken bits of Share Today, and realized what must have happened. 

He tried to sit up and smacked his head off the top of whatever his prison was. 

After a moment of swearing and checking to make sure he hadn't broken his nose he groped around his prison to get a feel for it.

It was about the size of his bunk of the bus when they actually had a bus to tour in, and was a bit bigger than the space he slept in on the RV they normally used.

Stone, he thought it was stone anyway, it didn't feel quite right to be concrete.

Anssi heard Ville voice break off in a yelp of pain and planted both hands on the lid and shoved.

~0~

Theon hoped that wherever Sami had gotten off to he'd gotten Valo safely out of range of the sorcerer.  Sammy was chained to one pillar, and he could feel his own chains wrapped around the one behind him.

At least Vivi was safe outside, he could vaguely feel his lover's fear, but whatever had flattened them was now acting as a barrier and he couldn't speak down the bond to sooth his agitated vampire.  At least he could still feel something, and could take comfort in knowing his love was alive even if he was scared silly and frustrated as hell.

He could see Jason, stuck in his wolf form, collared in silver and chained to one side of the nave and Christian chained where if he changed he'd drive a silver spike right through his mates throat.

Proved the Trovitch wasn't a complete idiot.

Unfortunate that.

Little Ville had been trying to sing to keep his own rather nasty temper in check.  But apparently the Trovitch was getting tired of it; he'd just backhanded the small singer.

Theon felt a twinge on sympathy, that blow had to have hurt; it had split Ville's lip.  But Ville was just glaring daggers and if he hadn't been chained up he might have tried going after the sorcerer.

But he was chained, almost as heavily as the two lycan.  That made Theon wonder exactly how much of a pain in the ass Ville had been to his captors.  He'd been loaded down with what had to be his own weight in chains before they'd chained him to the pillar.  Arms and wrists and even his ankles were shackled together to keep him from being able to kick effectively, not that Ville didn't still try.  That and Theon could have sworn he'd heard at least three of the unholy screams that meant a demon infested host had been injured enough that the demon had been forcibly cast out and returned home.

That hinted that the Trovitch hadn't bothered to ward his minions worth a damn.

Good in the short term, but potentially unpleasant later if they ran into those demons again.  It depended on how badly the damage carried over and how personally they took things.

The guards, hench muscle, whatever's came back in pairs and Theon felt his heart drop. Two of the pairs were dragging someone between them.

The first set had Jyrki, who Theon had thought was watching the front doors. They dropped him and Jyrki just lay limply where he’d fallen even though Theon had seen the vampire up and fighting after much worse handling.  The chain around his throat looked like it was carved from some pale wood.

Theon felt his eyes widen.

Vampire.  Wood.

 ** _FUCK_**.

The Trovitch had whitethorn chains.  Jyrki would be helpless under their influence and probably would have Burton screaming in echoed pain even through the heavy wards the sorcerer had put up to keep the rest of the teams outside the cathedral while he worked.

“I see you now understand the gravity of your situation Hunter.”

“Oh god, shut him up now, _please_?”

Theon gave Ville a boggled look.  Sammy let out an incredulous gurgle of his own, but Theon suspected the other singer had at least cracked ribs from how he was breathing.

The Trovitch turned to glare down at his not very subdued captive.

“What did you say little vermin?”

Ville glared back up at him, even chained where he couldn't stand he wasn't acting like a proper cowed victim.

“I asked god to shut you up.  Before you went on an epic 'ooh I'm _sooo_ Evil' monologue. Isn't that wha...”

Theon winced as the smaller man took another hard smack to the face.

But then he noticed something odd.

There had been six pairs of demon infested minions when this jackass had started this party.

Now he only saw four pair.  Someone was lose still, and was busy.

Theon felt a surge of surprise from Vivian, and then his head was ringing from a blow.

“Stop trying to contact that failure outside.  He can't come in and save you.”

Theon lapped at the blood welling from his own split lip before grinning up at the sorcerer.  A really rather plain looking man he noted idly.  Short, thin and with mouse brown hair, not really intimidating at all other than his power level.

What the heck, the guy deserved a verbal kick in the shins for insulting his Vivi.

“I dunno, he’s _damn_ good in bed.  Last night he...” Theon reeled from a sharp series of blows.

“I am not interested in hearing about your perversions.”

“This isn't just a kink of yours then darling?” panted out Valo from his spot on the floor.  His breathing was wheezing, sharp and shallow.  The sorcerer stormed over and landed a hard kick to the man's gut that sent the other singer back into a stone crypt and left him there coughing up blood and fighting to breathe.

Theon hoped it was blood from a bitten cheek or lip, not something worse as he counted demons again

There were six left.

The sorcerer paced.

“Soon, soon you will all bear witness.  I _will_ have my Servant.”

“And all will bow down blah blah blah, _seriously_?  Do all you bad guys use the saaie!” yelped Ville as the man lost patience and grabbed him by a handful of dreads and yanked his head back hard.

“You will be silent.  You don't need a tongue to be useful to me.”

Theon felt his eyes going round as he watched the lid of one of the crypts lift then slide back with a harsh rasp.

But the Trovitch was too busy ranting at Ville to notice.

He noticed the thunk of the lid on the floor and the threatening growl though.

“Um... Thee?”

“Yeah Sammy?” offered Theon as he watched pair of angry green gold eyes rise out of the crypt.

“Did Vivian look like that when he came for you?”

“Ah,” Theon had to stop and think.  “No.”  Vivian had been bloody, covered in mud and been half mad with blood need and fear.

“Ah.  Some guys get all the luck.”

The slender vampire flashed across the room with a shriek of rage only to bounce off a ward that flared into being around the Trovitch.

“I don't think that's luck Sammy.”

The Trovitch laughed.

“No little fool, not lucky, not for you.”

~0~

Sami sighed and carefully broke the neck of the last demon infested minion he could see.  It had to be a singer thing.  Valo, Ville, Theon and even Sammy, all four of the idiots were taunting the sorcerer.

Little Ville had more courage than sense and had smarted off about villain monologues in a way that would have had Jason laughing his furry butt off if it wouldn't have put him at risk for a silver spike to the throat.  Christian had _no_ sense of humor left and was growling like he did when he wore fur.

At least they were down to the Trovitch.

He had to smile a little, Ville had hit a button by needling the man about monolouging, and now the idiot was going and ranting about how perfect his plans were.

_~David and I are in position, ~_

Sami smiled ferally.  His little love and their other flighted partner had made it inside the formal boundaries of the cathedral just before the wards went up that would keep the vast majority of the six teams outside.  With three of them they could send this jackass to go make apologies in person to the demon's he'd summoned, and to some of his human victims.

The only good part of having only a few of them inside was that any demon infested minions outside would be soundly dealt with.

Probably with extreme prejudice if he knew how his own team coped with frustration.  He almost felt sorry for the demons.

Almost.

Another good thing was that Julian had a lot of folks to power the containment wards to keep the Trovitch from hopping bodies again.  Six pissed off and frustrated teams worrying about their friends and teammates shut up inside meant a **lot** of power for a rune net.

They just needed to keep him contained in here first.

~0~

Anssi growled.  His Ville had a split lip and his cheek was swollen and purpling.  Worse the bastard who smelled of his blood was protected, he couldn't get to him.  He's tried and been flung back to skid in an un-gangly tangle across the floor twice now.

Worse he was hungry; his gut was roiling in nauseated hunger.

He paced around the bastard as he gloated and boasted of how he'd planned for every contingency.

He was gloating over how hungry he knew Anssi had to be, how the others would be food.

How he'd kill his darling Ville first.

Anssi would rather die than hurt his Ville.

Two of the men were chained up to pillars with something that repelled him.  One was wheezing in a very unhealthy way and had the stench of another vampire all over him. Part of his mind was screaming that Valo wasn't food, that his mate's smell wasn't a stench.  It was a proper thing for mates to wear each other’s scents that way.  Then he circled back to Theon and registered the smell of another vampire.  Sammy had a different scent, one that screamed danger to him so he shied away from him.

Jyrki had something around his neck that seemed to be hurting him.  Instinct had him reaching to help the other vampire and he screamed in pain and recoiled from the light wooden chain.

The hunger screamed at him more stridently.  But he refused to go to close to Ville.

Christian ignored him, was growling with a level of hatred Anssi could fully understand, and was chained in a weird way to Jason's wolf.

Jason smelled good.  Christian didn't.

Anssi reached out and burned hand or not was able to snap the collar holding Jason and chucked the silver spike away, releasing Christian to change and launch himself at the startled sorcerer.

Christian bounced hard off the wards on the bastard, just like Anssi had, but he rolled to his feet and paced an angry circle around the rattled man.  His wolf bristling and snarling in frustrated rage as it paced.

If he'd been a cat his tail would have been lashing like crazy, as it was he was fluffed so his already massive form looked even bigger.

“Impossible.”

“Planned for every contingency hunh?  Looks like you missed one,” snarked Ville as Jason rolled out of his wolf shape and to his feet and stared into Anssi's eyes.

Predator.

Anssi recognized it.

But he also smelled edible, even with the musk of another wolf all over him and the lighter scent that now made Anssi think of Julian.

Then Jason smiled at him and offered a wrist.

“Impossible,” came the gasp as Anssi took his first small blood meal from a willing donor.

~0~

Mikko shook his head in amusement as he and David moved in to flank the idiot.

“No, not impossible.  Any kid who can _read_ knows blood compatible lycan exist.”  David yelped and skipped backwards away from the levin bolt the sorcerer flung at him.

The man’s own wards soaked up the blow and spun it into the shields cocooning the inside of the church.

He flung a bolt toward Anssi, clearly wanting to hurt him enough to drive him into full fledged blood frenzy, but Jason saw it coming and had them both out of the way.  Christian tried to pounce when his back was turned and got thrown again.  Then he spun and threw a bolt at Mikko.

Reflex had Mikko's wings out and reflecting the power bolt back into his teeth.  The return blow had him staggering, but his personal wards didn't go down.

He snarled and threw another bolt at David only to get it reflected back as black feathered wings came out.

“Two of you, two of you won't help. You can't hold me.”

“Gee, looks like they can,” Ville managed.

Mikko took a breath as the Trovitch spun in place and cocked his arm to throw, then recoiled when someone stepped between him and Ville's chained, but still uncowed, body.

“Do you remember me Ivan?”

“You're dead,” he hissed as he recoiled away.

Jason was moving to pull the whitethorn chain from around Jyrki's neck, then to check on Valo.  Mikko could hear Sami breaking the chains on Sammy and Theon

But his eyes were locked on Luna where she stood between the Trovitch and Ville.

“Not dead.  Not for all your trying.”

Mikko blinked as Jyrki staggered to his feet and moved to help Anssi free Ville.

“You're _dead_!” the sorcerer insisted.  “I locked you in that death trap with my own hands.”

Luna took another step closer.

“I remember.  I remember you having me thrown out of the plane as well.  You didn't burn and salt the body, you didn't make sure that I wasn’t found.”

The sorcerer kept shaking his head in negation as he tried to back away; but his wards wouldn't let him move between Mikko and David.

~0~

Jyrki felt his knees give and he half knelt beside Ville as Anssi swept him into his arms.

But his eyes were on Luna.  Little Luna who was backing a Trovitch sorcerer into a corner.

Dear little Luna who clearly _knew_ that sorcerer.

“You're minions tried to make sure for you.  But half made ghouls don't stand up to vampires very well.  They ran away when my Bazie came for me.”

Her tone was fiercely possessive, the tone a lycan used when speaking about a mate that had been threatened.  If he hadn't heard Bazie using a similar tone when speaking about Luna he'd have been utterly blind-sided.  Mating bonds between vampires and lycan were very rare.

“You have no mate.”

“ _Had_ no mate, Ivan.  I had no mate, now I do.”

Jyrki blinked.  Well then.  It looked like they needed to throw a party, once this was over.

“No, you were supposed to me mine,” he took a step toward her but Luna didn't give ground.

“I would have been your friend, but you wanted a demon's wife and I couldn't be that.  The Laws prohibited it.  You still tried.”

The sneer was a rictus of madness.

“You'll always be second class, you'll never breed.  You can't even kill me.”

“I don't have to kill you.  By the maiden, innocent and new; by the mother, full in her bearing and by the crone old in her wisdom I bind you.”

Jyrki felt his breath freeze in his throat and reached a hand toward Luna.  But he couldn't seem to find the strength to rise again.

“By the youth, proud in his folly; by the warrior full in his glory and the elder wise in his age I do bind you,” spoke Mikko in eerie half echo, his wings relaxed at his back.

Jyrki snapped his head around to stare at David who smiled his slightly absent-minded smile.

“The waters do drown you, the air does smother you and earth does rise to crush you.” he whispered and Jyrki's eyes snapped back to the Trovitch.

He went from an unremarkable young man to a withered and brittle body, the air spun around him and left him clawing for breath then the very stone under his feet rose up and wrapped crushing blocks of stone ivy around his chest.

Anssi kissed Ville and rose and punched his hand right though the stone wrapping around his chest.

“Thrice bound you are, thrice sealed and thrice _dead_ for threatening my Ville with death at my hands.”  Anssi yanked his fist back out, bringing with it the crumbling heart of the dying sorcerer.  A crumbling heart he crushed to powder then dusted off with a look of disgust on his mobile face.

“Go make amends to the victims you sold to demons you bastard.”

The pillar that had been a Trovitch crumbled into dust and the wards imploded leaving Jyrki's ears ringing in their wake.

Anssi just turned his back on the crumbling sorcerer and crushed Ville into the pillar he'd been chained to and kissed him breathless.

Jyrki sat down hard and felt Luna at his side and had to smile weakly at how she shoved her wrist under his lips and all but forced him to feed.

He could feel the faint, clean hum of Julian's wards around the cathedral and could hear the sounds of running feet and men swearing as their teams came for them.

~0~

Janne was a hovering mess.

Anssi was torn between hugging the man stupid and putting up with the out of character fluttering and _punching_ him.

Ville was being a bit clingy, but that Anssi was dealing with as he was feeling uneasy any time Ville was out of sight for very long.

Sami said that was normal for a vampire in the early stages of a bond, especially after the mess they’d lived through.

Sleeping together helped.

Janne had snarked in an almost normal tone that it wasn’t the _sleeping_ it was the knock down drag out fucking that was helping, but he hadn’t shut the door or asked for anyone to shield or ward the room for sound.

And being fair he was right, the sex did help.  Anssi smiled down at where Ville was half curled in a loose ball in the middle of their ridiculously large borrowed bed.

Was it his fault that he was enraptured by Ville’s face when he came?  That he loved the desperate needy whines his little lover made when he needed to come so bad it hurt but wasn’t quite ready to beg for it yet?

On the good side vampire healing meant that he didn’t have to tie Ville’s hands every time they had sex, he could afford to let the man claw like a demon at his shoulders and back as he struggled to hang on and not come so fast.

But Ville bit; and that provoked a whole new reaction now.

Last night Ville had sunk his teeth into Anssi’s shoulder trying to keep from screaming his head off and Anssi had sunk his fangs into Ville in instinctive reaction.

Ville had screamed his head off, raked a very telling set of claw marks down Anssi’s back and left interesting bruises in the shapes of his heels as he’d drummed them off Anssi’s flanks in reaction.  Anssi had felt like someone had literally blown his head off he’d come so hard.

Ville had passed out.

He’d been warned about bonding instincts, and been warned about the Legate who apparently was his grand-sire.

It didn’t help.

The jackass fully blamed the Hunter teams for not getting his Childe back to him safely, never mind that the girl had been dead by the time they’d known and long before they’d known enough to even try a retrieval.

The Trovitch had been smart there, grab your vampire and kill her quick before anyone can do anything about it.

He’d tried telling Anssi he couldn’t bond Ville.

Ville was to short, to much a peasant, not appropriate at all according to the jerk.  Wasn't dead gorgeous and a woman more like, _then_ he’d told Mikko he couldn’t speak in defense of the bond as he had no ‘kin right’ whatever the fuck that was.

Anssi was stewing in the room he and Ville shared right now, with Ville in it to help keep him calm.  Not that his high fucky fuck face knew that little detail.  He was supposed to be alone and considering his _duty_.

Duty.

The jerk didn’t want him, had backhanded him across the face twice and told him to shut up.

Vivian had snuck in and explained he was considered a Legacy childe, mostly because they knew who the primary donor for the blood that made him was.  If they hadn't known he'd have been counted as a Stolen Childe, but then they wouldn't behaving this issue with the Legate being a butt head.

That his precious darling childe been something of a bitch wasn’t relevant.  That he’d never met her was utterly irrelevant.  They knew who she was, they knew who her maker was and that maker was unhappy to have to deal with an unwanted child.

Anssi stroked Ville’s hair, idly ordering the dred locks over the clean bed linens.

He could hear voices and his ears pricked up to listen.

“I do _not_ care.  The boy will obey or die by my will; he is _my_ blood, however debased.”

Anssi snarled, he was really starting to hate that bastard.

“He’s not property; he is a Childe of the Rite, not Messilandre.”

“Don’t quote that mealy mouthed treaty nonsense at me Jyrki.  The boy is mine.  He _will_ obey, even if I have to kill that vermin of a human creature he thinks is his destined.”

Anssi began to growl in irritation, no one was touching his Ville.

“No.”

“Get out of my way Black.  I’m taking him and going home to the Aerie.”

Sami’s tone was deceptively mild.

“No.  No you aren’t.”

Anssi started toward the door but was pulled back by a hand on his wrist.  He could have gotten free, easily, but the worried look on Ville’s face had him on the bed and both arms around his little love before his higher brain could really process that he was going to move.

“Are you calling your banners _Lord_ Black?” came the oily drawl.

Sami’s answer again was shockingly mild.

“No.  I don’t need to, but if you’re too scared to do single combat…”

Anssi could picture the Legate’s offended posture.

“A scion of the house Du’bois fears nothing.”

“Good to know, if you were really a Du’bois.”

“How dare you,” the rage was palpable and Ville was shivering in Anssi’s arms.

Sami by contrast sounded perfectly amiable.

“I dare rather a lot in my own house, lucky for you this isn’t my house.”

Christian’s tone was caustic when he spoke up, letting Anssi know there was probably quite a crowd outside their door.

“My house is yours.  Always has been Sammy, you know that.”

“I will see you at dusk.”

“Still having a sunlight issue?  Might need to get that looked at.  We’re meeting at the Enclave; Vivi’s already notified the Elders.”

“How dare you, mine is the right,”

“In this case, no it’s not.  You violated Hospitality by coming here demanding Anssi when he’s got line right, he doesn’t have to claim you.”

There was a long silence, then Sami’s voice again.

“Jules?  Can you exclude him from all the Hunter properties we know and have ward privilege to?”

“When he smarted off to Janne I started the process.” a moment of silence, “I sort of woke up Jinxx and Strify, but they’re glad to know and will do a more formal adjustment of their wards.  Jinxx said he passed it on to Jael.”

“Good to know,” there was a tap on the door before Sami poked his head in with a wry smile.  “Don’t worry too much, we were just making sure he didn’t try and drag you away from each other.”

Ville swallowed hard.

“What was that?”

“Pretty minor,” started Sami, when Jyrki let out a very rude noise.

“Calling line challenge is never minor Sammy Black, and you damn well know it.”

“I think you need to explain that to us, all of us.  Janne needs to know too I think.” said Anssi trying to keep calm so he didn’t make Ville go flying off the handle.

“I’ll get coffee going, lunch was about ready anyway.”  Mikko clearly headed down the steps if the quick patter of feet was anything to judge by.

“Let’s move everyone down to the planning room, it’s bigger,” offered Julian.

Then Christian shot Anssi and Ville a lecherous grin.

“Probably better put clothes on, Ville’s pretty enough to be distracting.”

Anssi was torn between sighing and growling.

Christian was right after all.

~0~

“So what's Line Right?” asked Ville as he settled down in a chair.  He sighed and shot Anssi a look when he made sure his little mate had a full plate in front of him, but he did eat.  After Anssi insisting on dressing him in a baggy pair of sweat pants and his last surviving flannel shirt food was nothing.

Thank god Mikko knew how to deal with pescetarians and vegans.  More comforting was the fact that there was a bit of a scuffle over the bowls of fish soup; that implied even the carnivores found it edible.

“Line right is something that allows a legacy or stolen childe the right to refuse a vampire trying to claim them.”

Janne blinked.

“That's it?”

Vivian nodded as he chewed a bit of soup soaked bread.

“Hunh,” Ville blinked up at Anssi as his vampire settled down beside him with a bowl of his own.  “I thought vampires didn’t eat normal food.”

Sami smiled as he shifted around Mikko and set two large pots of tea out.

“It depends, mostly only the very old vampires can subsist on blood alone.  Most of the younger ones it's a mix, blood lets us digest normal food.  Others miss the tastes of things and eat for taste, not nutrition.”

Ville took a bit of the bread Jason offered and had to drop it quickly as it was far hotter than he expected.  Anssi sighed at him and retrieved the bit and set it by his bowl.

“Careful silly.”

Ville stuck his tongue out, but then ducked his head and took a spoonful of soup.

“Back to that twit.  What the heck did he mean about calling banners, that sounds, well medieval.” asked Janne as he settled on Ville's other side with a bowl and plate of his own.

“It is. And it's rather what it sounds like,” offered Bazie as the other vampires had their mouths full.  “It's two leaders calling all their allies.  It hasn't been done in over a hundred years.”

Ville blinked.

“So he's bluffing?”

Sami shook his head.

“No.  He was trying to intimidate because I'm a stolen childe, most of us don't have the kind of pull he thinks he's got.”

Ville's eyes narrowed, but Janne beat him to it.

“Thinks?”

Mikko elbowed Sami and glared him into submission.

Ville had to smile.

Big bad vampire?  Yeah, no.

“Thinks, because he's been neglecting or outright abusing his allies, so a number of them have found other places to be.  Sami has more pull than he realizes.” Mikko settled in and began ticking points off on his fingers.  “One, he's a daywalker right from the get go, only a very few bloodlines carry that trait, the most prominent is the Tsepes line.  Yes, Anssi, those Tsepes, Stoker was a blithering idiot on most things but he was correct that Vlad was, and is, a vampire.  Two, we're in contact with _a lot_ of Hunter teams.  Most teams nowadays are mixed, with lycan, vampires or both serving shoulder to shoulder with humans of varying flavors.  We're seeing an upswing on bond pairs between Slayer and vampire lines even, so we're doing _something_ right.  Hunters support other Hunters, generally anyway.”

“So the vampires from those teams could call family?” Ville asked; latching onto a theory, the smiles he got made him preen a bit.  Anssi's smile and gentle stroke down his spine made him bounce as he went back to his soup.

“Yes, they can, and if it comes to it I suspect several will.  A calling of banners takes precedence over almost all Hunts.  So we'd have folks coming that under more normal circumstances wouldn't be able to.  The last calling of banners allowed for the current lycan vampire treaties to be settled.”

“He couldn't just say call your banners and set a stupid timeline could he?” asked Janne as he processed that last bit of information.

The negative head shakes were reassuring.

“He has to give _at least_ a week for the Royals who have to witness to get here.  We'll have the local prince and at least two visiting royals here for witness.  And Sami set the location, so it's to our advantage.  That reminds me; Jyrki? Linde?  Would you two be willing to donate a bit of blood for a potion to help keep Anssi from getting flattened by a Line call if that jackass tries one?”

Both nodded and Jussi piped up.

“Me to,” the feral grin made Ville look more carefully at the small vampire.  “Mixed blood should fuck with his head real good.”

Timo-timo, Bazie and Vivian also chimed in that they'd be willing.  Larry nodded and mutely indicated he'd help as well, but he had a mouthful of bread and couldn't answer verbally.

Janne cocked his head.

“Stupid human question, why just ask Jyrki and Linde? Since it looks like more is better?”

Linde smiled slowly.

“We're the oldest here Janne.  Timo-timo and Larry are spontaneous conversions, Bazie's sire is still around and Vivian is a stolen childe.  There are consequences for us donating for a potion of this type.”

Anssi's head snapped up.

“You're sort of adopting me aren't you, all of you?”

Jyrki answered this time.

“We are.  But as there will be many of us, none will have line claim on you.  Not unless you _choose_ to accept a line claim.”

Christian didn't even look up as he chimed in.

“And you can claim brotherhood to more than one of these lunatics if you want to.”  Christian let out a low grunt as Julian elbowed him sharply in the ribs.

Jason just sighed and fished out the tiny obsidian knife he'd used earlier in the week for ritual bloodletting.

“Just clean it before you bring it back.” he warned before he handed it over to Mikko.

Ville began giggling, he couldn't help it.  They'd gone from three against the world to having more family than they quite knew what to do with.

~0~

Anssi sat nervously in the living room of Christian’s warehouse and watched as Mikko carefully cut a tiny slice into Jussi's wrist and let the cut bleed over a steaming pot set over a brazier on the stone coffee table in the center of the room.

“Is this gonna taste as nasty as the potion that freak asshole made me drink?”

“Well, it won't taste terribly _good_ , unfortunately there's no way to make this taste decent and have it still work.” offered Mikko as he put pressure on the small cut then let Jyrki lick it closed for his little brother.

Jussi just sighed and rolled his eyes, fussing at Jyrki that he wasn't a baby.

Sami stepped in and let Mikko bleed him a second time.  His blood had gone in first, and now that all the vampires had made their donations his blood would seal things.  Illy had quietly explained the reason for the double dose was that Sami had stepped up to protect Anssi.

Anssi wasn't sure how he felt about that, but at least Sami wasn't acting like an overbearing and overprotective older brother.

Jason had heavily mitted hands and carefully lifted the steaming hot pot to pour the contents into a cup.  Anssi blinked, he'd have thought that there would be more volume of liquid given how many people had bled in the pot for him, but the cup wasn't very big at all.

Mikko cupped his hands around the cup and muttered a spell that had Illy's eyes going round and the cup frosting over with an odd chiming sound as the metal abruptly cooled.  Then he called Ville over.

Ville gulped and picked the cup up like he expected it to explode in his face and carried it over to Anssi.

Anssi gulped and looked up into his lover's eyes.

Ville was doing the begging eyes as he offered the cup.

Anssi gulped again and cupped his hands over Ville's and tipped the cup up and swallowed.

Mikko hadn't lied, it tasted vile.

But at least it wasn't as horrific as the mix that had changed him, and this time it was three quick gulps and the cup was taken away. 

The mix hit his stomach and Anssi gasped at the sudden euphoria that hit him.  He had enough time to gasp 'whoa' and the world spun away into glittering darkness.

He felt Ville's arms around him as reality slipped away.

~0~

“That went well.”

“He passed out?  How is that doing well?”  Janne snapped as Sammy and Ville helped settle Anssi on the couch.

Kris chuckled and gave him an easy one armed hug.

“He didn't scream, his eyes didn't glow red, they glowed gold and he's got a goofy ass grin on his face.”

Janne sighed and looked again.  Sure enough Anssi did have a goofy grin on his face as he snuggled deeper into Ville's arms.

“He looks like he got laid,” Janne grumbled, reluctant to completely let go of his worry.

Kris chuckled.

“He kind of does, but I don't think I want to be handy when he wakes up.”

Janne snapped his head around to look at Kris.

“Why?”

Kris grinned at him.

“He's gonna want to re-cement his bond to Ville.”

Janne blinked as replayed that sentence in his mind until it made sense, and then he groaned.

“He's gonna fuck Ville stupid isn't he?”

Kris's grin was all the answer he needed.

Great.  Just fucking great.

~0~

Jussi boggled in shock.

“He what?” bleated Bazie in shock.

The Eyes team had been happily taking advantage of the hospitality of the Lovex team and teasing the crap out of Valo as he fussed over Jussi.  They'd been doing a bit of fussing of their own over Luna, which she put up with mostly because she loved them, and been waiting to see if the Legate would find his brain and call off the impending fight.

“He's demanded a formal calling of banners and a change in location.” repeated Hata mildly as he watched Kris 'flying' Seppo around the room under Jonne watchful eyes.

Jussi groaned and buried his face in his hands, only to look up at the ceiling and mutter something rude as he felt the comforting hands of his mate rubbing at his shoulders.

“How the hell did he manage that trick?” asked Linde softly.

“He went straight to the Prince and wailed about Sami trying to keep the stolen childe of his only childe from him.”  Hata's tone was painfully dry.  “In better news the Prince likes Sami's choice of location and didn't change that.”

“Wonderful.” Baize grumbled as he thumped his head off the back of his chair.  “How's Sami coping?”

“He's rather annoyed.” answered Mikko as he stepped down off the bottom step.  “He was hoping we could avoid dragging Anssi through this crap.”

Timo-timo abruptly sat up as he had a thought bite him.

“He won't try just kidnapping Anssi will he?”

“He has,” Mikko's smile was sharp edged.  “It didn't work so well.  I called for a bit of backup.”

“Who?” asked Bazie and Jussi almost in the same breath, but Jyrki began laughing.

“You called that pretty demon back didn't you?”  Mikko's nod had Jyrki laughing like a lunatic, something that had his team looking back and forth between the two men warily.

“Okay, what kind of a hold do you have on a demon that you can manage a stunt like that?”

Soft footsteps on the steps had them all looking up as Anssi padded down with a very pretty demon two steps behind him.

“Very simply darling,” drawled the demon.  “He's my cousin.”

Valo spluttered and Linde all but choked on a mouthful of tea.

“What?” bleated Jussi.

Mikko smiled crookedly and shrugged.

“My father was Mere's father's older brother.”

“And Papa is quite well thank you, and is Mama.” teased the demon as he nudged a rather dazed looking  Anssi toward a chair and went to fill two mugs with tea.

Now that they were _looking_ the similarities were rather frightening.  Mere was taller, but both had similar slender frames, sharp cheekbones and fine straight hair.

“That's possible?” asked Bazie weakly.

“Nephilium bond to all kinds,” Mikko shrugged then smiled as he watched his, his cousin inhaling the steam from his tea mug in apparent rapture.  “I'll make sure to stick a jar of that mix in your box.  Christian already found the orange pekoe your mother loves.”

Jussi shook his head in wonder as he watched the demon's face light up in clear delight.

Demon's loved tea.

Who knew?

~0~

Regine was amused.

The little bastard who claimed her sire's bloodline was trying to make a power play against a stolen childe.  She'd seen the collecting banners, and been delighted to see some she'd thought had degenerated to nothing over the years.

Ulf was less amused, but it was his territory that the twit was threatening to turn into a bloody battlefield.  Not that the old Viking was opposed to a good fight, he'd just learned some measure of diplomacy in the last few hundred years.

That and he despised the little rat.  But he'd followed the forms and made a convincing play of mock grief at the loss of his childe and the thought of losing her only childe, stolen though he was.

Pity it was all a lie.

Louis had never been one for letting his belongings go to others.

And he wondered why so many of his old banner-men no longer answered his calls.

Idiot.

She had to smile at the other witnesses.

Vlad was still a charmer, rising to bow over her hand and calling her 'my princess', as if his ranking's weren't higher than her sire's.

But the man was called both 'the wise' and 'the clever' for a reason.

They'd collected the principles in the outdoor practice area of a local enclave of lycan.  Regine found herself rather impressed both at the size of the space and at the hospitality of the enclave.  It was good to see old treaties holding strong in the face of the modern world and all its changes.

She settled with a cup of very good tea and watched as Myriam oversaw the calling of the line.

The stolen childe glared at Louis and didn't budge.

Regine's eyes narrowed as she saw a slender little mortal sigh in clear relief.

That was interesting.

She smiled when the childe turned his back on Louis is a very clear rejection and walked right to the little mortal and cuddle him close.

Well then, that changed things quite a bit.  Then she blinked at the odd hairstyle of the little one.

“Why does the little one have such matted hair?”  He appeared cleanly other than having his hair matted into long strings.

“It is a thing that is a matter of personal style these days my princess.  His little collection has another who shaves his head but for a few bits and has them matted similarly.  Humans can be quite strange.”

All she could do was nod, but she still smiled at the clear love between the pair as the stolen childe buried his nose in his little mate's hair.  She had to sigh when the slightly smaller man smiled up with clear and blinding joy at his mate.

Ulf just huffed.

“Philistine,” she teased him.

“Blithering romantic,” he shot back without venom.

Regine smiled fondly back at him as Vlad nodded to Myriam to continue.

Louis strode over to the banner poles with clear confidence and grasped the one on the right and fed it a bit of his power to Call his Banner.

Regine wasn't surprised to see the simple scarlet pennant debased with the black marks of bastardy.

The other man cut a far finer figure than Louis in his fancy armor.  His was simpler, all black and clearly had seen serious and quite hard use.

It was the armor of a Hunter.

She leaned forward a bit to scrutinize the man some were calling Lord Black.  He looked back up at her and cocked one eyebrow.

An eyebrow he wore with a hoop threaded through it.

She couldn't see much of his hair, covered as it was with a bit of black cloth, but she could see his eyes and he appeared resigned.

Resigned but determined.

He reached out and gripped the other post and Regine could _see_ the pulse of power he fed it.

She gaped in shock at the roar and sharp snap of the great banner unfurling.

It was the Great Dragon.

Vlad rose in shock and gaped up at the banner than only his line could call.

A dragon that floated in its own wind, marked with the white line behind its head that marked the Heir of a line.

Vlad had made no childer.

As far as anyone knew his brother hadn't either before his death.

Clearly they'd all been wrong.

This stolen childe was a Tsepes.

~0~

“You were not aware?”  Ulf hissed at Vlad as he stared in shock up at the dragon fluttering in a wind no one else could feel.

“I had none,” he answered as the childe, his brothers lost childe let go of the banner and walked back to his mate.

“You sure you still wanna do it this way?” the young lord asked mildly.  Clearly he wasn't afraid, but wished to protect his people.

He was a good Lord to his men then.

Vlad blinked when he saw other lord’s banners going up in the crowd on the Black side of the arena.

Vujori, Lilankavi, Linstrom, old families all.

He saw younger families, houses that had no noble connections, then he saw one he'd thought lost.

Purdy.

And the young man under the banner was clearly naturally born a vampire, even better he had his mate with him.

Vlad gaped when he registered what else was standing beside the young Purdy.

Destoyer.

The Du’bois bastard had no chance at all.

~0~

Ulf swore.

Vlad had an heir.

And the Du’bois bastard had just forsaken good sense and sent a blast toward the human by his contested childe.

It violated custom, and all good sense.

Ulf was at the railing and ready to jump when a flash of violet smoke heralded the boys; savior.

The blast reflected back off black velvet wings and took out one of the Du’bois men.

“Your nephew has _demon_ allies?” he roared back at Vald as the elder gaped in shock.

Vald spread his hands and shrugged helplessly.

Ulf turned back and gaped like a fool down at the erupting fight.

Vlad's heir turned and, in a move that looked far to practiced to be chance, gave his little mate a boost up into the air.

The move made no sense, at least until another set of black velvet wings snapped out and made a powerful down sweep that had that blond shooting up into the air.

'Your nephew is _mated_ to a demon?” Regine gasped in shock.

“Hardly,” scoffed the too pretty black haired demon as he hefted his slender charge up to Ulf and hopped with light grace up after him.  “My cousin is Nephilum.” He turned a charming smile on Regine, but kept a wing half curled around the little human.

Ulf boggled and blurted at Vlad.

“Your nephew consorts with angels and demons?!”

“I always knew the Tsepes charm was outlandish, but good gods...” Regine muttered with some feeling and fervent French swearing.

Vlad just shrugged, then grabbed Regine and ducked a stray blast.

When they looked back over the railing Ulf had to admit the young lord and his allies were a lot more organized than the bastards pitiful few.

It was a slaughter.

“Well, at least we know the blood is true,” mused Vlad, then he grinned and shrugged. “We tend to be lions in bed and in battle.”  He chortled in amusement when Regine swatted him.

“I'll take your word for it,” Ulf responded dryly as he observed. “Odin Allfather,” he swore.  “Your nephew holds the oath of Prophets and a _Destroyer_?”

Regine was at his side gaping like a child at the flashes of clear scarlet light being thrown with a deft hand from a sad eyed youth, his partner guarding his back with a grace that bespoke of years of teamwork.

Then the bastard got off a lucky shot and caught his contested childe in the side.

Black wings dropped from the sky as one of the burly lycan diverted to skid to his human knees beside the fallen childe.

Ulf swore.

How were they coordinating so well?  He'd seen nothing that indicated Vlad's stolen heir was bonded to more than one.

Then he saw a slender dark haired man at the back of the fight, slender hands dancing over what appeared to be chess board filled with glowing pieces.

“Your nephew holds the oath of a Rune Master,” he bleated helplessly.  He'd thought the skill was lost, at least as far as battle application was concerned.

Then he was gaping as the little human mate to the fallen childe was over the rail and running for his mate.  The demon swore and took wing to catch up.

The human was at his loves side as Vlad's heir disarmed the bastard.

And the fool was trying to plead mercy.

Ulf winced when the little man took a knife from Mikko's belt as the blond was busy aiding the lycan healer and stormed up to the vampire who had hurt his love and with a level of ruthless brutality that Ulf saw only rarely in modern men drove the blade through the breastplate and yanked upwards.

Armor and man screamed in protest.  But the little human had spun and was back at his mate’s side, forcing his wrist under his mates lips as the lycan levered the childe into a semi seated position.

Well, good to know the childe had a properly protective mate.  He’d seen battle hardened warriors not do so well.

Myriam stepped out from under the protective feathered wing of yet another angel, demon, Ulf wasn't sure which.  Had the young man had a warhorse he'd have called him Valkyrie he was far and fierce enough.

“The battle is done.  Lord Black holds the field.” She called.

The young lord winced.

“Sami, please.  Not Lord of anyone.”

“I think old friend, your heir is a force to be reckoned with.”

“Yes, yes I think so.”

Ulf nodded with due gravity, then sat down and passed out cold.

~0~

Dawns light proved a bit unpleasant, but Jason and Mikko had expected at least some of the vampires who came to answer Sami's call to not be prepared for daylight.

Larry grimaced at the dose Jason all but force fed him, Vivian grinned at him as he helped him limp over to where the more or less walking wounded were gathered for the lycan healers to fuss over.

There were no dead.

Well, not on their side anyway.

That alone had Larry a bit boggled.  Relieved as hell, but boggled.

Kris was hugging Jonne tightly and whispering to their son.  The kidlet had no idea how serious this was, and had been thrilled to be able to watch.

Kid had no idea that he'd probably have been killed in principle if the Le... _former_ Legate had won.

Kris looked a bit battered, but his smile was happy as he cuddled Jonne and little Seppo tightly.

Larry scanned around.

Luna was scolding Bazie and all but sitting on the vampire to keep him in place while a lycan Larry didn't recognize wrapped his arm.

Jason was swearing as he and another smaller lycan worked on poor Anssi.  Of all of the injured his was the worst.

Ville was in a near panic, Janne had him wrapped up in both arms and was struggling to keep the singer out of the healers way.

Sami swore and thumped to his knees by the failing youngster, Larry snorted at the thought, Anssi was _his_ age, and shoved a wrist under his lips.

Anssi struggled, but Sami snarled and insisted. 

It still took Jason and Mikko helping to all but force Anssi to bite Sami.

Anssi couldn't take more than a swallow or two and he was convulsing.

“Let me,”

One of the witnessing royals moved in and forced Anssi to bite, and did something, something that made his eyes glow a clear gold.

Anssi swallowed, once, twice and a third time then slumped.

Ville screamed and was reaching for him.

Then the strange vampire stood and swept Ville tightly into his arms.

Larry blinked.

The guy was short.

He was shorter than Ville.

Talk about presence, he'd seemed taller a minute ago.

“Shhhh, little one, your mate will live.”  Then warm brown eyes locked on Sami as he knelt by Anssi and helped Jason cover the wound in his side with bandages.

“Sami Tsepes you do well by your brother.”

Sami blinked and looked up.

“My name is Saarelaa”

The smile was odd.

“Perhaps it was, but now you are a son of the Dragon.” he smiled and stroked a hand over Ville's hair, allowing the man to stand on his own now that he wasn’t struggling to get to his mates side, he actually looked rather gray and like he was about to pass out.  “Both of you are son's of the Dragon.”

Larry gulped and looked up.

Where Sami's black dragon pennant had flown there now floated three cloth dragons.

One was solid black and huge, one slightly smaller had a white ring behind its head and the third was smaller still and had a scarlet ring on its neck.

Sami blinked and brought his eyes down from where they also had been looking at the banners and looked at his mate.

“Did I just get adopted?”

“Looks like it love.”

“Hunh, okay.  Jase?  How soon before we can move him safely?  I want him and Ville someplace safe, before Ville... nevermind.”

Mere smiled sweetly as he'd swept in just in time to catch Ville as his system finally decided it had had enough and he crumpled.

“Might I recommend the Hall?  Lady Talla has the healers setting up sleeping space for our wounded so they might rest well.”

Sami sighed.

“He's kin of yours all right, he snarks the same way.”

Larry couldn't help it.

He cracked up laughing in a mix of hysteria and relief.

~0~

Ville sniffled and buried his face deeper into soft fabric.  Gentle, familiar, hands stroked over his hair and back and that made him jolt awake.

“Anssi?”

His lover looked pale and rather battered with his ribs wrapped up but he was alive.

“Anssi...”

Ville pounced and was drowning Anssi in kisses.

Kisses he was more than happy to take as his arms wound around Ville and pulled him close.

The feel of linen bandages made Ville start and pull away.

“Your side, did I hurt... eep!”  Ville squeaked when Anssi pulled him back down and rolled to pin him under his lean body.

“I'm fine. Mmm “ he purred as he nuzzled behind Ville's ear and made him shiver and go limp.

“Anssiiiiii...” Ville wailed as his vampire began nuzzling in a way that he knew would make Ville horny.

“Hmmm?”

“I suspect he's merely wishing for a bit of privacy,” mused an oddly accented voice.

“Oh god,” whimpered Ville in mortification.

“You gallivant around the apartment naked,” Anssi groused as he reluctantly let Ville up and faced the man who had interrupted them.

“That's different,” Ville protested as he hid his burning face in Anssi's shoulder.

“Very much so,” agreed the man, who proved to be rather short, with dark hair, laughing brown eyes and a mustache that looked like it belonged with mutton chops on a motorcyclist.  “I should think it would be, ahhh distracting though.”

Anssi grinned at him and Ville huffed and swatted, struggling to escape so he could go hide somewhere else.

Anssi didn't let him go.

“Forgive me child, but there are things your mate needs to be somewhat aware of as a Dracula.”

Ville stopped,

“Like Stokers Dracula?”

The pained sigh and exaggerated roll of eyes made Ville giggle.

“Unfortunately, the man maligns my homeland and turns me into a wretched letch that preys upon young girls.”  There was a rude snort.  “But aside from him, yes, I am a child of the Dragon, as are you now.”

Anssi blinked.

“Hunh?”

The other man settled beside the rough bed they were lying on and gave Anssi a sober look.

“Your brother fed you a bit of blood to sustain you; I fed you more and laid a line claim on you both.  Sami was the stolen childe of my younger brother Radu.  He is now the claimed childe of my line, and my heir rather to his disgust.  Line right makes you his younger brother, yes yes,” He waved off the protest Anssi started as if he fully knew exactly what Anssi would say.  “I know your birthdays say you are the elder, its _blood_.  These things are often confusing.”

Ville blinked as Anssi snapped his mouth back shut.

“Um, so what's all that mean?”

“In day to day life for you, very little.  You have another name to use should you choose to, once or twice a year there will be invitations, but those often can be politely declined.  Once a decade an invitation that cannot be so easily dodged, from the high court.  Bah tiresome things, such parties.”  There was a flip of a hand that made Ville blink.  “Sami will have more issue than you and he's already got the proper attitude.  If it's important he'll deal with it, mindless blathering he ignores.”

There was a soft snort, and Anssi and Ville both turned to look at what the man was staring at with such amusement.

Some vampire flunky, one who clearly wasn't too bright, gushing at Sami and annoying him to the point where he'd crossed his arms across his chest and was glaring.

Then Mikko came up behind the twit, and smiled sunnily at him.

The flunky went white and bolted.

Anssi cracked up.

“Okay?” asked Ville poking his lover in the side.

“He, oh god, can do a shark toothed grin,” Anssi broke up in giggles.

Ville blinked and shared a look with their odd visitor.

He got a wry smile and a one shoulder shrug that reminded Ville strongly of Theon in a flippant mood.

Ville blinked and had to smile at the way Sami cuddled Mikko close and rested a cheek on his shorter mates head as he stroked a hand over one wing.

He wondered if he and Anssi looked like that when they were cuddled together...

From the oddly fond smile he was getting from their visitor he had to conclude that yeah, he and Anssi were stupid cute.

That made him smile goofily and snuggle in closer to Anssi's side.

~0~

Janne frowned at the knife that was weighting down a pile of papers covered in Ville's distinct chicken scratch.

One of the things that was bothering him was that it was _Ville_ with a knife.  He knew Ville had carved a slice into the jackass who had hurt Anssi with his own hands, but Ville was still largely non-violent.

Probably a good thing given how nasty his temper could be, him having wicked good aim with a bag of salmiakki was bad enough.  Janne really didn't want to think about the damage the man could do with a thrown CD case, never mind a _knife_.

The second thing that was bothering him was that this particular knife was odd.  It was clearly very old, made of bronze and had an oddly triangular shaped blade.

And it hummed to his senses in a way that screamed that this was a Slayer blade of some flavor.

He pulled out his phone, took a picture of the blade and texted it to Mikko with a series of question marks under the photo.

He got an answer almost immediately, a short text and an attached file.

*it chose him.  I am NOT trying to take it back.*

Janne let out a puzzled grunt and opened the file. He boggled; five hundred pages of research?

He let out a huff and gave the blade a long second look, and then settled down to read.

~0~

Janne swam up from his reading several hours later, his head was spinning and the lights that had been out were now on and he could hear Ville and Anssi puttering in the kitchen.

“Back with us?” teased Anssi when he poked his head in the kitchen in search of something to drink and to help his settle him head.

“Somewhat, Ville?”

Ville looked up at him from where he'd been stirring a mixed pan of vegetables.

“Humm?”

“How in hell did you end up with a phurba?”

Ville blinked at him blankly.

“A whataa?”

Anssi snickered at the befuddled look on Ville's face.

Janne gestured back toward their workroom.

“That three sided bronze pig sticker,” Janne sighed when Ville's face lit in recognition. “It's a Tibetian phurba.”

“Oh, okay.  I never asked Mikko what it was, it was a knife.”  Ville shrugged and poked the pan again.  “It likes me, so I kept it.”

Janne fought the urge to bury his face in his hands.

“It _likes_ you?” he echoed weakly.

“Yeah, it really hated el-dicko.” 

Janne had to stifle a snicker at Ville's use of Jason's name for the former Legate.  Anssi just snorted in open amusement.  Ville just rolled his eyes at both of them and gave Janne a verbal nudge.

“Yeah, yeah.  It likes me though, what of it?”

Janne sat down at their tiny table and scrubbed his hands over his head.

“I think you need to read what Mikko's learned about the thing.”

Ville blinked and gave Janne a long, measuring look.

“Okay.  Why?”

Janne shot a pleading look at Anssi and got a shrug and a questioning look back, so he sighed.

“It's a Slayer's blade, it's older than shit and it's got a bit of a nasty reputation?”

Ville sighed and gave Janne a look he really hated.

It was the 'and?' look, the one that made him feel like a petty jackass.

“It _likes_ me,” Ville reiterated calmly.

“That kind of scares the fuck out of me Ville.  That thing let you carve through plate steel armor like it was wet tissue paper.”

Ville's glare ratcheted up a step.

“So?  The jerk hurt my Anssi.”

Janne sighed and forced himself not to roll his eyes at the sappy smile on Anssi face.

“Don't you think that's kind of dangerous?”

The flat look was back.

“And your sword and dagger are _safe_?”

Janne winced, but Ville had a point.

He just wished the singer wasn't using it on him.

~0~

Anssi sighed as he finished reading through all the research Mikko had forwarded to Janne.

Now he rather understood Janne reservations about that knife.

It was a Tibetan demon slayer.  Something only a very particular sort of priest could use safely.

Ville was far from priestly; their bedroom antics alone were proof of that.

Anssi leveled his gaze on the blade.  It looked so innocent in its current use, a glorified paperweight for some of Ville's lyrical meandering.

But it had carved a heavily armored vampire from navel to jaw in one clean swipe.

Ville was strong, he had to be lugging gear all over the place, but he wasn't _that_ strong.

He hesitantly reached out a hand and picked up the oddly heavy blade and turned it over in his hands.  The stacked grotesque faces on the handle leered back at him as he turned it over and over in his hands.  The blade itself wasn't even sharp, but the point was wicked sharp.

“Hurt him and I'll find a way to smelt you down,” he threatened the blade, feeling more than a bit silly for threatening an inanimate object.

In the back of his mind he felt an odd tickle of amusement.

Anssi gulped and almost dropped the blade.

But then he felt something else, almost a question.

“I love him,” he blurted out, not sure who he was speaking to.

The feeling became one of quiet contentment, even pleasure and satisfaction.

Anssi shivered and carefully set the blade back down.

“As long as we're in agreement,”

“Anssi?  Who are you talking to?”

Anssi gulped and looked up at Janne, then looked at the knife and away.

Janne's eyes followed his.

“Oh. Yeah.  It creeps me out a bit too, but if it helps keep Ville safe.”

Anssi nodded.

“Yeah, a sacrifice I'm willing to make.”

The blade seemed to chuckle in the back of his mind.

But if it kept Ville safe, well he'd live with the damn thing laughing outright at him.  

He’d put with almost anything if it kept Ville safe.


	22. Uh? Hello?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Random bits of fluff that didn't add to Sacrifices, but deals with events there.

Anssi groaned and rolled out of bed to shuffle toward the kitchen.  He heard someone singing and the sound of dishes clinking together, than meant someone was up.

Singing meant Ville, and singing and awake Ville meant coffee.

He dragged in and stopped to stare at a very nice ass wrapped in iridescent black spandex.

But Ville didn’t own any back spandex, if he did they’d have ended up being worn by all three of them at some point, Anssi should know; Ville’s gold set had ended up on his head at one point.

His eyes tracked upwards.

Ville was awfully pale; he’d have to see about dragging his love out into the sun a bit more often, then his eyes locked on a set of _purple_ eyes under a fringe of _black_ hair.

Purple.

His Ville had _blue_ eyes.

Anssi let out a yelp and lurched backwards groping for something, _anything_ to be used as a weapon.  He’d been snatched once; he had no intention of it happening again.

“Who are you?  How did you get in here?” he blurted as he kept groping blindly for a weapon.

The owner of those eyes blinked at him and turned to fix a mug of coffee, apparently not at all concerned about the possibility of getting clubbed with something random.

“Call me Mere, everyone else does.  And I came through the door; that _is_ the accepted practice among humans is it not?”

Mere, Anssi groaned again and sank down onto the couch.  Mikko had sicced a guy by that name on Ville to keep him safe if things degenerated into a free for all fight last night.  Hell, Mikko'd sicced the guy on him after that freaking Legate asshole had tried snatching him.

Had it only been last night?

“Not last night, two nights ago, your injury required a small bit of rest.  Its mid-afternoon now,” the tone was pure irony, but the face had a wry smile on it.

A slender hand offered him a steaming mug, one Anssi accepted mutely.

“Mikko made sure I could hang around as long as I was needed this time, but I don’t believe you were handy when I appeared the first time.”

Anssi blinked, as his brain slowly woke up.

“Didn’t you have wings before?”

The smile he got was naggingly familiar.

“I did, and still do, they just get in the way indoors.”  The shrug again was familiar.

“Where’s Ville?”

“With my cousin, that feathered flitterhead and your Slayer, Ville didn’t want you to wake up alone.  Two Nephilium and a Slayer should be _more_ than enough firepower to keep your little mate safe.”

That sounded like Ville, but Anssi slanted a look up at Mere.

“Cousin?”  He’d swear he’d heard this before, but his memories between his conversion and now were, well, spotty.  For one thing he swore he remembered a little guy with brown hair claiming to be Dracula saying he was a child of the dragon and that Sami was his big brother…

The smile gave him the creepy crawls.

“Mikko.”

Mere squeaked and was grabbing for the mug as it slipped from Anssi’s nerveless fingers.

“Mikko has family?”

The smile this time was warmer.

“Extended family, yes,” he offered the mug back, and Anssi took it numbly. Maybe enough caffeine would make things make sense again.

~0~

Ville bounced up the stairs with his arms full of lovely garden fresh vegetables. He still thought Mikko’s car was silly big for just one man, but he had to admit that it was nice for four people on an extended market trip.  He twitched a little when Mikko had stopped at a butchers stall in the farmers market, but his droll remark about most vampires _not_ being geared to be vegetarians of _any_ flavor had made his point.

He took some comfort in the fact the stall Mikko purchased from was run by a small consortium of farmers, and that the animals had been raised and killed as humanely as possible.  They had known him on sight so that implied he was a regular.

Ville was still glad that the fish was packed in a separate cooler.

Janne was a few steps behind him, also laden down and snickering about how Anssi was going to get bounced out of bed.

But Anssi was awake.

He looked like he wasn’t _enjoying_ being awake, but he was upright and moving.

It looked like Mere had shown mercy and fed the poor bassist coffee.

Anssi happily accepted the cuddle and kiss Ville pounced him with once he’d rather carelessly set down his armload, but then he speared Mikko with a look.

“When does it stop being weird?’

Mikko blinked and rocked back on his heels before he continued into the kitchen to help Janne put things away.

“Uhuuhhh?” he questioned shooting Anssi a puzzled look as he unpacked strawberries and bundles of leafy green.

Anssi sighed and looked at Mere then back at Mikko with a cock of his head and a speaking look.

“Ah.”  Mikko said in understanding.  “It never really stops. You just get more used to it; so it bothers you less.”

Anssi grimaced.

“Ducky.”

“Quack,” agreed Mere with a crooked smile; then he sobered.  “It does get easier.  And you are Tspes by blood adoption, by both the head of line and heir of line.”

Anssi raked his hands through his hair and wished for a cigarette, not that he could really smoke one.  Since his change the things made him ill, hardly fair at all.

“I really don’t understand what that means.”

“It means that the issue many vampires have with daylight will not be an issue for you, that other than needing a bit of blood once or twice a week you can be sustained by normal foods.” Mere grimaced. “Though you may find you need red meat over the fish that has served you until now.”

The chuckle from Mikko made Anssi twitch.

“Mere, he may do fine; some manage just fine on fish, you just can’t fathom people not eating meat.”

Mere shuddered.

“I am an _omnivore_ ; I eat just about anything that doesn’t eat _me_ first.”

“Including Bael?” teased Mikko.

The result was a huff and the pretty demon pointedly walking out to help Janne haul in more bags.

“Uh?  Hello, what was that?”

“Mere has someone back home he’s interested in, but Incubi aren’t really wired for monogamy and the other demon is, so he hasn’t been getting anywhere.”  Mikko clarified as he sorted bag contents into neat piles.  They must have made several fruit sellers very happy from the piles of produce he could see.

Anssi snorted and shook his head, then sighed at Ville as he came back from a quick jaunt into the kitchen with a bowl of freshly washed strawberries.

“Imp,” he teased with affection.

“You love me anyway.”  Ville teased back, and wafted a single fragrant and clearly perfectly ripe berry under Anssi’s nose.

Anssi stared at the berry meditatively, then snapped at it and missed when Ville giggled and yanked his hand back to bite the berry in half himself.

Rather than go for what was left of the berry Anssi took the dish and set it aside to grab Ville and kiss him breathless.

“Oh for... can you two _not_ fuck in the living room?”

Anssi grinned at Janne’s complaint and scooped Ville up, heading back to the bedroom and shutting the door firmly closed on Mikko and Mere’s laughter and Janne’s protests.

 


	23. Two to Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Larry Love finally figures out where he belongs, with the help of matchmaking former bandmates.

Larry watched Jonne being insufferably cute.  It wasn’t like it was something new; Jonne had gotten being cute down to a fine art form while they’d all been in the band together.  The cute factor had gotten toned down a bit when he’d learned he was going to be a father, and was squished almost dead when he learned he was going to be a single father.

He’d had a fit though when it had been suggested that he hand baby Seppo over to the state.

Larry had started calling folks, started offering to mind the baby on the nights he wasn’t playing or working.  Daylight visits were a lot harder, at least until he’d gotten adjusted to being a vampire, and had the dosage of his day-walker potion sorted out, not that he could afford it as often as he needed it.  He’d learned that all their good friends had teamed together to help Jonne get things for the baby.  Even that Sir Kristus had sobered up enough to be helpful.

Apparently he’d been the instigator for something called a diaper service, something that had saved Jonne’s sanity for a while.  Until Seppo was weaned and walking any cute was directed at the baby, or more because of the baby than anything Jonne was doing.

Now though the cute was back, and back in killer force.

He and Jay had made sure that when Jonne had run back into Kris and wanted to try reinstating the friendship that they were there to keep things cool.

Things stayed cool.  At least for a while.

Then he saw Jonne starting to pine.

Worse when they ran into Kris again, Kris was pining just as much.

They had an issue with a demon cult where Private line had been locked in a basement with most of Negative and Larry had finally lost it and locked the pair in a closet together.

The cute level went through the roof.

Now Larry was dreaming about the two of them together.

He knew he was losing his mind; the pair was so stupid cute it made his teeth hurt, Seppo called Kris his other papa.

But he wanted the be curled in a pile with those two, wanted desperately to feel Jonne’s mouth on his cock and Kris’s cock up his ass and was waking up in the middle of the day desperately horny and having to jack off to wicked hot fantasies of kinky threesomes to get back to sleep.

Feedings were going from lazy nibbles to him seeking out prostitutes who specialized in vampires, specifically ones who looked like Jonne and Kris, even better getting two girls and playing out a few of the tamer fantasies.

The girls he now went to knew him by name; knew who he was lusting over and were kind enough to play along, even to answering when he cried out the wrong names.

It let him function, even mostly act normally when he ran into the guys socially.

Which was starting to be more and more often lately, especially now that their hunter teams were working more closely together.

Larry had snuck off, and was desperately jerking out a quick one when Hata had scared the fuck out of him.

“You know that this isn’t going to always help.”

Larry whimpered and rested his head on his arm as it still had him braced against the wall.

Hata just cocked his head and waited for him to calm down enough that his eyes wouldn’t be flashing red gold at any other guy who walked into the bathroom.

“Lauri, you got warned when you changed this might happen…”

Larry wanted to snarl.

“I am not breaking up a mate bond.”

Hata’s smile was anything but reassuring.

“Who said you’d be breaking it up?”

Larry roughly shoved his dick back in his shorts and hastily zipped up.  He wasn’t having this conversation with his dick hanging out.

“Hata…”

Hata just crossed his arms and leaned back into the door.

“Lauri,” Hata parroted back at him.

Larry swore and raked his hands through the tangled mess of his curls.

“Hata,” he tried pleading, “I can’t, I can’t hurt them, they’ve both been through hell and finally found each other again…” he shook his head.  “I can’t, I can’t risk that I’m wrong.”

Larry shuddered when he felt Hata hug him and let the other guitarist guide him back out murmuring that he was being silly.

~0~

Ville swallowed hard and felt his mind whirling a thousand kilometers a second.

Larry love was in love with Kris and Jonne, had been for a while it sounded like.

He set his feet back on the floor from where he’d had them planted on the stall door and cautiously peeked out.

Anssi would have an idea of what they’d been talking about.  If Anssi didn’t know Mikko would.

Ville set his jaw and went searching for his mate.

~0~

Larry wanted to scream.

Kris had come visiting while Negative was filming a video.  Not a bit deal, so had he.

The guys had taken a break for food.

Again, no big deal.

But now he’d realized they were stuck in a basement with no way out except a locked door and a nonfunctional elevator.

And it was just three of them down here.

He was going to **_kill_** Hata.

Larry whimpered when he realized Kris had decided to kill time by making out with his mate.

At least they had a nice bed to play in, though the girl in charge of the set might just murder them both for making a mess of it.

Jonne let out a low moan that made Larry’s cock jump eagerly and throb in his jeans.

Kris was leisurely mapping out Jonne’s hot buttons with his mouth while his hands peeled Jonne out of his jeans.

Larry tried to look away from where Jonne was writhing in needy pleasure, but the tiny pleasured catch of a moan had his eyes locking on Jonne’s face, glowing with a thin sheen of sweat.

He swallowed hard, felt his throat click a little from being so dry and panted as his eyes tracked down to the pulse point on Jonne’s throat as the singer thrashed his head in wanton need.

Then he saw a bit of skin where there had only been black leather.

Kris was skinning out of his trousers, showing that he still had a lovely pale ass.  But he was struggling a bit, leather liked to cling to sweaty skin.

Larry broke.

~0~

Kris let out a tiny gasp at the feel of Larry’s hands helping strip him down, then he let out a yelp when he felt strong hands holding his hips steady as a mouth began sucking at the dimples on either side of his spine just above his ass.

He could just feel the rake of vampire canines.

Kris couldn’t stop the moan when he heard a zip moving and gasped when he was moved over a panting Jonne and half crushed down into him.

Jonne didn’t seem to mind much, at least he spread his legs a bit wider and squirmed to thrust his leaking cock up to rub against Kris’s aching dick.

“In me, need you,” panted Jonne as he groped for Kris’s shoulders.

“Fuck him,” growled Larry in a voice that had Kris’s instincts screaming in fear and lust at him.  But Larry backed off enough that Kris could line up and slowly push in.

“You prepped,” he panted out as his aching dick slid smoothly inside.

Jonne just flashed a sweet smile than broke into a lusty moan.

Kris let out a low cry when he felt Larry forcing his legs apart, pushing him down and in, and screamed when he felt a tongue probing.  His hips slammed forward as best they could, but then those strong hands held him locked in place, all he could do was writhe and make Jonne struggle under him as he pled for friction.

Larry’s tongue was replaced by fingers, and then the blunt head of a stiff cock.

He couldn’t help it, he screamed.

Larry froze, and Kris let out a little sobbing gasp and hung on as his body adjusted, at least he and Jonne fucked around enough that it didn’t take long, but god Larry was bigger than Jonne.

Jonne was begging and Kris was shaking in echoing need, so he nudged backwards a bit.

His reward was Larry pulling out and slamming back in.

That forced him so deep into Jonne he was sure the singer would break in two, but Jonne just arched up with a shriek of pleasure and raked one hand down Kris’s spine, the other groped blindly for Larry’s hand.

Kris keened through a few brutal, exquisite repeats of that thrust.  Larry was so big, Jonne was so tight, he needed to come.  Jonne was a writhing demon under him; raking his hands down his back so hard Kris could feel the blood beading up and beginning to flow.

Then he felt the gentle tracing of a tongue over those marks and felt the odd tingle of vampire healing at work.

Then Larry was plastered to his back and he felt the twin pin prick of fangs at what had to be the most awkward angle.

But then he didn’t care, he was screaming his head off under the wave of an intense orgasm.

~0~

Jonne wailed as he felt and heard Kris come, he was so close, so fucking close and needed it so bad.  He whimpered when he felt Kris sliding out then let out a choked cry at the feel of another cock, longer but slimmer sliding in.

Then he was screaming out his finish to the feel of sharp teeth sinking into his throat.

~0~

Antti laughed when the repairman finally got the elevator working and he and Jay were the first one’s down it.

Jonne was probably going mad with wanting things done already, and Kris was probably pouty from low blood sugar.

He was getting ready to bound in when Jay grabbed his arm and stopped him.

“Jay?”

The look on the lycan’s face was intent and Antti had to stifle a giggle at how silly he looked scenting the air as a human.

Then he yelped as Jay shoved him back into the elevator with a brusque order.

“Go back up.”

“Jay?”

Jay turned and locked eyes with him long enough that Antti gulped.

“Go back up, call Jason and have his get himself and Sammy over here. Preferably with Theon and Viv, but alone will work.”

Antti boggled and opened his mouth to protest when he heard an inhuman snarl.

“Go!”

Antti scrambled for the buttons to close the doors and head back upstairs.  Only when he was trembling in the arms of Snack and Hata did he realize he’d left his teammate in the basement with god only knew what.

~0~

Jay took a breath and turned back to where Larry was half crouched over an annoyed Jonne and an amused Kris. He had to fight to keep the urge to grin down to a lopsided half smile.

Jonne huffed at him and shoved futilely at Larry’s hip.  Kris just laid back and gave him a crooked smile back and wriggled his fingers in s goofy little wave.

Larry though stayed in his protective posture, his eyes glowing the oddly orangeish gold of an annoyed vampire.

Jay spread his hands in a relatively universal show of being a non threat.

Larry growled and turned back to pin Jonne flat to the bed.

Jay sidled a bit closer and asked Kris, “How far along?”

“Two bites on me,” was the mellow answer.  But Kris was always a bit more agreeable after a good orgasm or two. The sleepy eyed smile was an open invitation to sin, but the hand stroking down Larry’s hip was a bit possessive.

Jonne’s grumbles and half protests broke into a cry of lust.

Larry had spread his legs and was biting at a spot high on the inside of one thigh, Jonne was trying to writhe and pinned securely in place as his cock rose, purpled and then jerked as he came.  The little sobs that followed were all of the over stimulated kind as Larry daintily lapped up the spill of semen off of Jonne’s belly.

“Good?” teased Jay mildly.

Kris’s grin was both perverted as hell and strangely contented.

“Fucking amazing.”

“Oh god,” panted Jonne as he lay limply under Larry.  “I think I’m dead.”

Kris chuckled and shifted to nuzzle behind one ear.

Jay had to smile when he saw how easily Larry shifted to give Kris room and the tenderness of the caresses the three were exchanging.

Larry caught Jonne’s hand and dropped a kiss on the palm then moved up a little to bite the wrist.  Jonne’s eyes slid closed and he whimpered as Kris leaned in to help by trailing little kisses up his jaw.

Jonne’s whimpered pleas for more and for them to stop made Jay smile again.  He wasn’t too worried when he heard a breathy cry and saw Jonne go limp.  Larry caught Kris’s wrist and repeated the bite on him and while Kris didn’t black out he was even more loopy than usual.

Larry grumbled something under his breath and glared at him.

“Mine.”

“Not arguing that, just Witnessing.”

“Did Kris and Jonne finally trip Larry… ah.  I see they did.”

Larry’s growl went a notch deeper as he scowled blackly back toward the elevator.

Jason snorted and if it was possible was even less intimidated by Larry than Jay had been.

No that that little fact kept Larry from growling protectively as Jason did a quick check on a sleeping Jonne and another on Kris.

The growl faltered when Kris wound an arm around his shoulders and tugged him backwards.

“C’mon Larry, Jonne wants a cuddle.”

Jay bit his lip hard as Larry snuggled down on Jonne’s right and let Kris snuggle in on the left.

But Larry did settle, and quickly fell asleep snuggling his new bond mates.  Big bad vampire?  Yeah, not so much; at least not where the mates were concerned.

Jay smiled a bit then blinked when he realized other than the sleeping trio it was just him and Jason.

“Where’s Sammy?”

Jason let out a snort.

“He’s dealing with idiots.”

Jay blinked, he would have thought with some of the aftermaths of last month’s fiasco with the former Legate things would be moving along more smoothly.

“Still?”

“Still,” Jason said with a nod.  “Good news is Myriam will accept us as Witness”

Jay perked up.

“She going to be the new Legate?”

Jason settled on the corner of the bed and watched the trio doze.

“Looks like it.” The Jason shot him a sidelong look and smirked.  “She thinks Ville is adorable.”

Jay cocked his head.

“How does Ville figure into this?”

Jason’s smirk turned downright evil.

“A little bird we both know apparently told Myriam to expect a new triad bond to be registering.”

Jay sat down hard on the rug by the bed.

“He didn’t?”

Jason nodded.

“That little sneak. So the locked door?  And the elevator?”

“Wouldn’t put either one past him.  He’s almost as bad as Mikko for having contacts in weird places.  And that’s assuming the Hata didn’t rig things himself.”

Jay blinked, then added up some strange behavior from his guitarist and began chuckling weakly.

“I’m in a band full of matchmakers, and friends with more.”

Jason nodded again as he watched Larry grope over Jonne’s side to rest his hand on Kris’s hip.  Kris had already spooned up tight behind Jonne and hooked a hand behind Larry’s shoulder.

“They’ll be a good triad I think.”

Jay smiled a little as he watched the three settle into a deeper sleep.

“Yeah, I think you’re right.”


	24. Pack Brothers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> kid fic, deals with little Seppo and a bit of an issue at his day nursery.
> 
> just because a kid LOOKS human, doesn't mean he IS human.

Sammy sighed and tugged his head scarf down a bit closer over his eyebrows.

It would figure that something would happen at Seppo's nursery school the week when Larry, Kris and Jonne were out of country.  Bad enough they hadn't been able to take the little imp with them, but now.

Sammy shared a look with Luna and she gave him an odd smile in answer.

Seppo had been fighting.

Not a usual complaint to get with the unusually mature child.  But this was three complaints in a week and this one had been compounded by the administrator demanding that they teach the child not to lie.

Seppo didn't lie.  He might be five, and at the age where children told stories, but he didn't lie.

Last night he'd said there was a lycan cub in the school with him.

The school said there were no lycan children, just a nurse who was shared between them and the primary school the nursery was associated with.

Sammy had fielded the call and decided the best way to deal with things was to take a lycan with him.

Luna had been the first one he'd called who could get away today.

If Seppo was 'fighting' with a lycan cub that changed things a fair bit.  Lycan cubs wrestled for dominance and pack position, and bloodshed was very rare.  It simply was a way to settling into the pack structure that would define their lives and cementing bonds with pack brothers who might have little or no direct blood relation as humans recognized them.

They checked in with the front desk and were led back to a small room where Seppo was sitting in a corner.  Another child was faced into another corner.

Sammy sighed and cleared his throat sharply, which made both children jump.

Seppo squealed and was bolting for Sammy's legs to hug him tightly and chattering away.

The other child was scenting the air.

Sammy shared a look with Luna and got a nod in return.

Then Sammy squeaked as Seppo started dragging him over to the other child, who looked up at him with wide brown eyes.

“This is Andre; Teacher doesn't understand he's like Seta Jason.”

Sammy blinked, that implied some interesting things right there; Seppo had a horde of lycan 'uncles'.  For him to claim this child was like Jason over any of the others was interesting.

Sammy went to one knee and gently caught the child by the back of the neck and gave him a gentle shake before pulling him closer to scent his hair.

The boy let out a tiny sob and went limp, cuddling into his side.

Well then, so much for there being no lycan cubs here.

Luna shifted in and cuddled the boy from the other side, huffing a bit as she scented him more properly.  The poor child just broke down in tears and buried himself as far as he could into her side.

Sammy shared a look with her and nodded before he turned back to Seppo. 

“Well done little one, we'll take care of things.”

Seppo nodded and snuggled into Luna's other side with clear content as Sammy got up to track down the administrator.

~0~

The man wasn't a complete idiot, an idiot certainly, but once he'd had it sharply pointed out to him by a lycan he was forced to accept Andre Vijadvi was in fact a lycan.  Even if the foster system had him listed as human.

Sammy called Jason, who went to Talla and the foster system abruptly had lost one orphaned child.  The pack was doing a look over of several other children who had been in trouble for fighting to see if they had also been mis-classified.

It just left Sammy amused that every day after that Seppo and Andre had a different person picking them up from nursery.

Jyrki had insisted just for the pure joy of seeing teachers who had hinted that Seppo needed to stop lying about his family gaping like fish.  Timo-timo was ribbing him mercilessly about having to use a driver as he _still_ hadn't gotten licensed to drive.

Archzie and Bazie had gone to the expense of finding motorcycle helmets to fit the boys, and Sammy knew Jonne would have a fit when he learned.  And given how Seppo chattered to his fathers, all three of them, there was **no** chance of Jonne not learning.  Assuming he hadn't learned already and flipped his lid.

Mere had wanted a turn, but the demon wards on the school property wouldn't let him get close enough, so he'd lent Anssi and Ville a convertible that only god himself knew where had come from.

Sammy suspected the back seat had gotten christened before the boys had been picked up.  He knew given the chance with Mikko he'd have been having a bit of fun in that car.  It looked like it belonged in a music video and absolutely wasn't anything local.

But back to the boys.

Jason had brought Andre in front of the healers and had confirmed that Seppo had a good reason for saying Andre was 'like Jason'.

Jason was a touch healer, had been once since a nasty fight with a huge warg pack when Seppo had been three.  No one understood what exactly had happened that night to trip him over from being an herb and knife healer to being a full on Healer.  Not that the pack much cared, the gift was to valuable.

Something that made Christian and Julian giggle was that Jason had been getting formal propositions from a lot of bitches from their pack and others to bear Jason cubs.

Jason found it a touch mortifying, but arrangements had been made and he had two confirmed cubs waddling about on unsteady paws in their home pack, only time would tell if the gift bred true.

Andre was a touch healer.  No one knew his lineage, so finding his birth pack would be a long process.  The state only knew he'd been found alone in an apartment with a dead woman who was presumed to be his mother.

She'd been strangled, and her murder was still listed as unsolved.

Sammy smiled softly as Seppo grabbed Andre's hand and all but dragged him off into a tangle of other cubs playing a rough and tumble game of tag.

“Pack brothers already?” asked Kris from behind him, making Sammy jump a little.

Kris grinned at him, and then watched his son coaxing his friend into changing into an unsteady wolfling.

“He's too thin.”

“We're working on that.” Sammy observed dryly.  Andre was thin compared to the other cubs, but he was filling out under the constant care of the pack's child minders.  He'd never be as plumb as the other cubs, but he was doing better now.  “When did you get back in?”

“About two hours ago, Larry and Jonne are right behind me.  Well, a couple hours depending on how the loading of the train went, but they'll be here soon.”

Kris's eyes narrowed a bit as he watched the two wrestling a bit.

“All Seppo needs is to shape change and we'd have puppies.”

Sammy snorted and watched as the pair got caught up in an impromptu king of the hill game and quickly began working as a team to hold the hill.

Kris cocked his head and watched.

“You don't think?”

Sammy snorted.

“Kris they're **_five_**.  Jason and I were the same way and never mated.  Give them some time to grow up before you marry them off.”

Kris grimaced and nodded.

“I guess we still have a good twenty years to stockpile clubs.”

Sammy just laughed.

~0~

Larry cupped his hands over Jonne's shoulders as the singer checked on his little boy.

Kris said things had just been a misunderstanding, warned them about the boys being exposed to motorcycles.  Thankfully Kris had also said proper safety gear had been taken care of before he'd said the boys had been taken riding, or Jonne would have found a way to reach through a phone to kill someone.

Seppo was sound asleep in a pile of other children.

He was cuddled closest to a little boy with dark curly hair and a faint olive undertone to his pale skin.  As they watched that child sniffled and nuzzled his nose into Seppo's fine blond hair.

“He's not one yours is he?”

Larry snorted, given how much trouble he and Kris had gotten into anything was possible.  But Jason had caught him and done... something weird and healer-y-ish and told him little Andre wasn't his.

“Jason says not.  He'd be more likely to know.”

Jonne sighed and relaxed a tiny bit.

“He does look like you though.  Did you find out why Kris was laughing himself stupid when we got here?”

“He'd seen Jason getting propositioned again.”  Larry offered dryly.  “By those northern twins.”

Jonne covered his mouth with both hands to stifle his giggles.  Watching Jason getting hit on by bitches who only wanted him to father a cub was _priceless_.  Fortunately Julian and Christian also thought it was hysterical or there would have been serious bloodshed. It was only a matter of time before one offered to have a cub for them to raise as their own.

Larry smiled faintly as he watched Christian’s large wolf shape pad in and check over the boys.

“He takes being an uncle seriously.” Jonne mused softly as he leaned back into Larry's side.

Larry smiled as he felt Kris bouncing up to snuggle into Jonne's other side.

“I think they all take being uncles pretty seriously love.  Jyrki had a blast scooping them up from school this week.”

“Do you think that finally shut up the idiots who were calling our baby a liar?”

Kris shrugged as he wormed a hand around to pet over Larry's hip.

“Maybe, at the very least it's taught them to wait and see before opening their mouths.”  Kris let out a small 'aww' sound that had Larry looking back at the boys.

Christian had curled up and Seppo and Andre had both migrated to cuddle up against him.

Jonne blinked a little, but had a happy smile.

“Shall we go get our boys for supper?” asked Larry softly.

Jonne nodded and Kris grinned before vaulting the railing to try and sneak up on Christian.

Christian had an eye open as soon as Kris landed, but let the Slayer sneak up on the boys to tickle them awake.

Then Jonne and Larry swept in to scoop the boys up and carry them off to supper.

Christian just gave Kris a very lupine look of amusement and very deliberately went back to sleep.


End file.
